A member of a respected family of engravers and painters, George Smillie was once described as “one of the most widely known American landscape painters.” He began studying under James Hart in 1861 and soon thereafter exhibited works at the National Academy, which launched his career. In the 1870s he was greatly influenced by the...Read More

Gay has been overlooked in the village as one of its artists, although he lived in Bronxville for seventeen years until his death in 1931. He studied painting in Chicago under Paul Brown, a well-known marine artist, and the landscapist Henry Elkins. Gay mastered both genres, particularly in watercolor; his oil paintings are rare. “Mr....Read More

Hobart Nichols bought a large plot of land overlooking Sunny Brook in Lawrence Park West in 1910, built a house and settled in Bronxville until his death. He contributed much to the artistic life of the village and to the New York art world. Nichols was highly respected among his peers for his integrity, sincerity...Read More

Hawley accepted the first of some 11,000 commissions in 1880. His career as an architectural renderer lasted for 50 years and spanned one of the most important eras in American architecture. He was born in England, and his early artistic career began in about 1874 as a scenery painter for Christmas pantomimes at Covent Garden...Read More

Mary Fairchild went to Paris in 1885 to study painting and was accepted the following year at the Salon where she exhibited regularly afterward. She married the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies in 1888 and eventually set up house in Giverny not far from Claude Monet and a growing number of American expatriates. The couple divorced in...Read More

The Philadelphia-born Ramsey is most often identified with the painters of that city. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1860s where he knew Thomas Eakins, the muralist Edwin Blashfield, and others. While at the Academy he first began to explore still life painting, which would remain his primary thematic...Read More

In Stream in Winter the long, low arch of a bridge over the Bronx River identifies the scene with Bronxville. One imagines that the artist stood along the water’s edge between what is now Pondfield Road West and Palmer Avenue, where in particular the river twists and turns as in the painting. The artist combines the techniques...Read More

In Winter Woods the strong blue and white contrast of the trees in snow is a departure from the depiction of a wintry scene in Stream in Winter. It is clearly more Impressionist in style and anticipates the strong compositions of Parsons’ Santa Fe years.Read More

Otto Bacher was the third member of the artist colony to move to Lawrence Park. Prior to establishing his Bronxville residency in 1896, Bacher studied painting with Frank Duveneck, who, with William Merritt Chase, had been among the first Americans enrolled at the Royal Academy in Munich. In 1880 the “Duveneck’s Boys” traveled to Venice...Read More

Spencer Nichols is probably best known as a designer of church windows and murals for Tiffany Studios. After his retirement from Tiffany he began easel painting around 1917 and found it challenging to transition from commercial to fine art. He moved to Bronxville at about the same time as his brother, Hobart, but relocated to...Read More