Henry Fitch Taylor

One of the 1887 group, he would end up twenty-five years later among the first American abstract painters.

Dates1853 — 1925
NationalityAmerican
DisciplinePainter
Place of birthCincinnati, Ohio, United States

Biography

Henry Fitch Taylor was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1853. He trained in Cincinnati under Joseph Jefferson in the late 1870s, then at the Académie Julian in Paris from about 1880 to 1886. He was active at Barbizon and Giverny in the mid- and late 1880s, then settled in New York in 1888, where he specialised in landscape of Impressionist inspiration. He moved to Cos Cob, Connecticut, in 1898. In 1909 he took over, with Clara Potter Davidge, the management of the Madison Gallery in New York. He was a founding member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1912 and helped organise the Armory Show of 1913. After 1914 his work turned towards Cézanne, Cubism and the avant-garde movements. He was a founding member of the Modern Artists of America in 1922 and of the Salons of America in 1923. He spent his last years at Cornish, New Hampshire, where he died in 1925.

Giverny

He was at Giverny in the mid- and late 1880s, in the very first wave. But his link with the colony was tied a second time, and differently: in 1909 he took over the Madison Gallery in New York — the gallery where, the following year, Frieseke, Richard Miller, Guy Rose, Lawton Parker and Edmund Greacen exhibited together under the name “Giverny Group”. The painter of the first generation gave his walls to the second. Three years later he helped organise the Armory Show, which brought modern art to the United States.

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