Julian Alden Weir

J. Alden Weir painted soft, thoughtful pictures of Connecticut farmland, quiet interiors and still lifes. After a slow conversion to Impressionism his palette became light and his brushwork broken, but his work always keeps a sense of solid drawing and calm.

He was born at West Point, New York, where his father Robert Weir taught drawing, and studied at the National Academy of Design and in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme. At first he disliked Impressionism, but by the early 1890s he had adopted it. He painted at his farm in Branchville, Connecticut, now Weir Farm National Historical Park, and was a founding member of the Ten American Painters. His friend John Twachtman often painted with him.

The Red Bridge (1895) in the Metropolitan Museum is his best known work. At the Piano and Autumn Days show his gentler figure and landscape subjects.