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Category: PAINTERS
Julian O. Davidson was an American artist and illustrator specializing in maritime and naval subjects, painted in formats ranging from periodical and children's book illustrations to mural-sized canvases. An adventurous spirit who loved the ocean, after receiving a boarding school education and a brief apprenticeship at his father's civil engineering firm, ...
... Davidson went off to sea at the age of 17 on the crew of a steamship sailing to the Mediterranean and Far East via the Suez Canal. He documented his travels in sketchbooks, and on returning to the U.S. studied art in New York with Mauritz F.H. de Haas, and was introduced to painters of the Hudson River School including Winslow Homer, Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church. He forged his style from these artistic influences and his in-depth observation of the water.
Davidson was also a championship sculler and lived near the Hudson River in Nyack, New York. During the Civil War, his facility with marine scenes led to commissioned illustrations of naval battles for magazines such as Harper's and Century. Later, Davidson produced a series of major oils of naval battles from the War of 1812. His painting of The Battle of Lake Erie (1887), a large canvas over eight feet long, was displayed at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and is now on display at the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania. This popular image was reproduced on Pennsylvania license plates in the 1990s.
Davidson exhibited at the National Academy of Design from 1877 until his untimely death in 1894. His paintings are also in the collections of the Hudson River Museum, the New-York Historical Society, and other museums.
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