Joseph Decamp

Art Brokerage: Joseph DeCamp American Artist: b. 1858-1923. Joseph DeCamp was a founding member of the Ten American Painters, a group of primarily Boston-based impressionists who sought to exhibit their works in intimate, aesthetically agreeable settings with like-minded artists. Though he was born in Cincinnati and, like others from that area, studied in Munich and with Frank Duveneck in Venice, DeCamp moved to Boston soon after returning from Europe in 1883. He taught at the Boston Museum School and became a highly successful portrait painter, acclaimed for his elegant depictions of fashionable women. The canvases that DeCamp and his contemporaries produced characterized the preferences and refinement of an era, and would come to define what is now known as the Boston School of painting. DeCamp's portraits and figural works concentrate primarily on their human subjects rather than on the decorative backdrops that became the focus of some of his peers. The artist's landscapes exemplify the impressionist style, conveying the visual appearance of a given place rather than its actual form, and pay lavish attention to effects of light and atmosphere. Sadly, scores of DeCamp's works were destroyed in two studio fires, one in Maine and the other in Boston in 1904. Listings wanted by Art Brokerage.