Posts in Category: january 15
Frances Benjamin Johnston
Frances Benjamin Johnston, January 15, 1864–May 16, 1952, was an American photographer. Born in Grafton, West Virginia, and raised in Washington DC, she studied art in Paris and Washington before learning photography and opening a Washington studio in the 1890s.
Johnston built a career as a portraitist and photojournalist, photographing political and cultural figures as well as the White House. Her work also documented education at Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and in 1900 she organized an exhibition of photographs by American women for the Paris Exposition.
In later decades Johnston specialized in gardens and historic architecture across the American South. She settled in New Orleans in 1940 and died there in 1952; major holdings of her work are preserved by the Library of Congress.
Ferdinand Waldmüller
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, January 15, 1793–August 23, 1865, was an Austrian painter born in Vienna. He studied intermittently at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1807 to 1813 under Hubert Maurer and Johann Baptist Lampi, supported himself as a portrait miniaturist, and worked as a drawing teacher and theatrical scene painter.
He returned to Vienna in 1817 and painted portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes. He joined the teaching staff of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, advocated direct study of nature, and also taught privately; his students included Hans Canon, Anton Romako, and Adam Brenner.
His proposals to reform academic instruction brought him into conflict with the Academy; he lost his studio in 1850 and was suspended in 1857. After renewed international exhibitions, Emperor Franz Joseph rehabilitated him in 1864; Waldmüller died in Hinterbrühl in 1865, and major holdings of his work are preserved at the Belvedere and Wien Museum.
