Edward Willis Redfield Biography | Oil Paintings

Edward Willis Redfield was artistically talented at an early age, and at the age of eighteen, from 1887 to 1889 studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His teachers at the Academy included Thomas Anshutz and Thomas Hovenden. While at the Academy, Redfield met fellow student Robert Henri, who was later to become an important American artist and teacher, and the two became lifelong friends.

After finishing their studies in Philadelphia, Edward Willis Redfield and Henri traveled to France and studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. At both French art academies, he studied with William Adolphe Bouguereau, one of the leading and best-known French Academic painters. In France, Redfield admired the work of Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Fritz Thaulow. He married the daughter of an innkeeper in 1893.

After a nine-year stay in France, Redfield and his wife returned to America and settled near New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1898. His Impressionists art was seen as totally American, not copying the style of the French as earlier American Impressionists, such as Childe Hassam had done.

The Impressionist landscapes of Edward Willis Redfield are noted for their bold application of paint and vibrant color. Preferring to paint en plein air, instead of in a studio, he was regarded as the leading twentieth-century American painter of winter landscapes, winning more awards than any other American painter, except for John Singer Sargent.

The influence of Vincent Van Gogh's fairly thick use of impasto technique is fairly evident in Redfield's paintings, but Redfield's use was even thicker. Road to the River was one of Edward Willis Redfield's favorite titles, and he used it for four other paintings depicting different seasons and locales, especially during the 1920s. Despite the fact that amid his lifetime, Redfield was acclaimed principally for his winter scenes, the spring scenes are among his most prized artistic creations today.

In later years, Edward Willis Redfield became dissatisfied his early works and in 1947 he burned a large number of paintings that he considered sub-standard. He quit painting in 1953, by which time he was already eighty-four years old, he lived to be ninety-six.

Art Movement: Impressionism.
Artists Influencing Edward Willis Redfield: Thomas Anshutz, Thomas Hovenden, Robert Henri, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Vincent van Gogh.
He Traveled To France.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.