| Joseph John Englehart | |
|---|---|
Yosemite Valley 1908 by Joseph John Englehart signed C.N. Doughty 83x56inch |
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| Birth name | Joseph John Englehart (?) |
| Born | June 14, 1867 |
| Died | April 14, 1915 (aged 47) |
| Movement | Realism |
Joseph John Englehart (1867–1915) was a prolific American landscape painter who worked under a number of pseudonyms. Englehart documented America's Northwest Frontier at the turn of the century, and was known throughout the Northwest for his oil paintings of areas including California, Yosemite Valley, Washington, and Tacoma. On most of his paintings he consistently avoided effets de soir, picking the midday light over the romantic quality of light most artist pick, sunrise or sunset.
Though successful, Englehart's realistic landscape paintings never received the critical acclaim given to the grandiose romantic painters of the contemporary Hudson River School, such as Albert Bierstadt or Thomas Moran. His works are included in the collections of several museums.
Englehart's pseudonyms and variant spellings included J. Engelhardt, J. Englehardt, J. Englehart, J. Engelhart, C.N. Doughty, C.C. Foucks, C.L. Willis, J.L. Monahan, W.L. Willis, WM. J. Schon, J. Lang, J. Gran, J. Grant, J. Cole, J. Enright, J. Hart, Enblhart, Ed Shroder, C. Williams, Joseph John Engelhart and Joseph John Englehart.
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Englehart was born on June 14, 1867 in Chicago, Illinois, and died on April 14, 1915 in Oakland, California.
"The wealth generated (in California) by the Gold Rush, the Railroad, the Comstock Lode, banking, and commerce, created a very favorable climate for artists. People like the Stanfords, the Crockers, the Hopkins and the rest of San Francisco society were buying art. Landscape paintings of famous places in the West were eagerly bought, and the current doings of the artists, where they were now and what they were painting, was duly reported in the papers and periodicals."
His career started in the California Art Boom. From the late 1880s until the turn of the century he maintained a studio in San Francisco on Clay Street. During those prosperous years he commuted to work from a residence across the bay in Oakland.
In the late 1890s he traveled and painted the Northwest, he did many landscapes of the Tacoma, Washington area during that period.
In 1902 after San Francisco's main purchasing taste changed temporally to European art, he opened a studio in Portland, Oregon and spent a large part of his time there until 1904. He participated in the Lewis and Clark Expo (1905) when he was 38 years old.
In 1909, at the age of 42 years old, He was awarded a prize for his landscapes painting in a New York show. By 1910 Englehart was again a resident of Alameda, California where he resided until his death in Alameda/Oakland on April 14, 1915.
Englehart's style was Realism, focused more on being illustrative and descriptive, rather than theatrical or romanticized. Just like an illustration in a medical textbook, Englehart's paintings can describe more than can be seen from many viewpoints. Bringing several views into one harmonious composition, yet simplifies to the essentials, and adjusting the main points to highlight them, all the while building beautiful enjoyable art that still has great flow, contrast, structure, tone and color. With simplicity of style, trying to bring the viewer closest to the actual experience of being there.
More popular contemporary frontier artists of the time painted the Great Pacific Northwest Frontier in such grandiose and theatrically extravagant terms that the locations of their greatest works are imaginary like Albert Bierstadt or Church. Or with beautiful romantic artistic distortions of Thomas Hill's Stunning paintings. "Not as it is, but as it ought to be" was Hill's goal of his paintings, he liked to give.
Englehart was born at the height of Americas populist belief in Manifest Destiny. America had just aggressively taken a large section of Mexico in a popular action that Abraham Lincoln strenuously opposed as an illegal action(cite needed) (this opposition lost him the next election). The Civil War had just finished. And in 1867 near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. This Medicine Lodge Treaty treaty required Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma. 1867 was also the year America purchased Alaska. He grew up with the American mood of "Go West young man!"
During his time the American artist helped mold the American west by instilling and fanning the eastern population's desire to create something entirely new, the protection of huge swaths of land as park land for use and enjoyment by the common people. This frontier was only seen through the eyes of an artist by the average easterner. And the few easterners that had seen it, took back paintings of its breathtaking beauties to evangelize their family and friends on the beauties of the unspoiled west.
Populist art of Yosemite helped create and save Yosemite from many attempts at development. But John Muir, his powerful friends, and his artist friends were not able to save Hetch Hetchy Valley, which Muir felt was more stunning than Yosemite. Englehart visited and color sketched the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, soon to be dammed to create a reservoir to provide water and power for San Francisco. The above 1908 painting's Hetch Hetchy Valley location is probably under water now. They say Muir died of a broken heart because they lost the battle to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
| Picture | Subject | Englehart's Signator |
Inches inc. org. frame |
Price | Auction House |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yosemite | J. Englehart | 64x44 | $19,120 | 2004 Christies | |
| Yosemite | Ed Shroder | 53x31 | $10,158 | 2006 Bonhams | |
| Yosemite | J.J. Englehart | 50x30 | $7,832 | 2009 JMoran | |
| Mining | J.J. Englehardt | ?x? | $7,500 | 2001 O'Gallerie | |
| Yosemite | J.J. Englehart | 46x32 | $5,581 | 2005 Bonhams | |
| lake | J. Englehardt | 50x30 | $3,250 | 2007 O'Gallerie | |
| Mythical Valley | J.J. Englehart | 50x30 | $3,000 | 2001 O'Gallerie | |
| Mt. Hood | Englehart | 50x30 | $2,750 | 2007 O'Gallerie | |
| Mt. Hood | J. Englehart | 48x30 | $2,500 | 2002 O'Gallerie | |
| lake | WM. J. Schon | 52x30 | $2,040 | 2008 Bonhams | |
| Crater Lake | J. Englehart | 36x26 | $2,000 | 2000 O'Gallerie | |
| Yosemite | WM Hart | 36x18 | $1,952 | 2009 Bonhams | |
| Mt. Hood | J. Englehart | 36x22 | $1,900 | 2002 O'Gallerie | |
| Mt. Hood | C.N. Doughty | 34x18 | $900 | 2003 O'Gallerie | |
| Picture | Subject | Signature | Size | $Price | Auction House |
| Joseph John Englehart's Paintings Sold at Auction | |||||
Washington State Historical Society [1]
College of Notre Dame (Belmont, CA);
Society of California Pioneers (signed C.N. Doughty, on loan from the De Young Museum);
Nevada Museum (Reno);
Oakland Museum.
And a large collection of His paintings can be seen at the Historic Baldwin Saloon at The Dalles, Oregon.
| Picture | Subject | Englehart's Signator |
Inches inc. org. frame |
Museum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add here | Add here | Signature | Size | Museum |
| Picture | Subject | Signature | Size | Museum |
| Joseph John Englehart's Paintings In Museum | ||||
Because Englehart used so many pseudonyms. Below is a list of Real People who have been shown not to have been Englehart: