Thomas Worthington Whittredge Biography | Oil Paintings

Thomas Worthington Whittredge as a young man in Cincinnati, he painted landscapes and portraits and at twenty-nine, decided to sail to Germany in 1849 to improve his artistic ability. He chose the Düsseldorf Academy, which was a major art school of the period, and studied with Emanuel Leutze. At Düsseldorf, he would sometimes pose as a model for Leutze. Thomas Worthington Whittredgeas is both George Washington and a steersman in Leutze’s famous painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. Whittredge also became friends with Albert Bierstadt.

Whittredge spent ten years in Europe, traveling and meeting with other artists including Sanford Gifford. He returned to the United States in 1859 and settled in New York City at the famed Tenth Street Studio where many Hudson River School artists were living, he started his painting career as a landscape artist, painting in the Hudson River School style.

Thomas Worthington Whittredge journeyed out West in 1865 on a sketching and painting trip with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett, across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. During this excursion some of Whittredge’s most important works were painted or sketched, panorama style, that captured the stark landscapes and horizon of the Plains, to be completed in the studio in New York. His magnificent 1876 painting On the Cache La Poudre River, Colorado, is a beautiful oil painting in a composition style rarely seen in landscape painting.

After his return from the West, Whittredge moved to Summit, New Jersey, in 1880 where he lived and continued to paint for the rest of his life.

Art Movement: Hudson River School.
Artists Influencing Thomas Worthington Whittredge: Emanuel Leutze.
He Traveled To Germany, Switzerland.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.