biografía de Maria Louisa WAGNER (c.1815-c.1888)

Lugar de defunción: Norwich, NY

Profesión: Miniature, portrait, landscape, still life & genre painter

Exposiciones: NAD, 1839-73; Brooklyn AA, 1863-72; Boston Athenaeum; Am. Art-Union; PAFA Ann., 1858-68, 1877, 1882-83 ("Deer in the Adirondacks" listed as by both Maria and Daniel)

Comentarios: For many years, she and her brother Daniel Wagner (see entry) worked together as artists, beginning in their town of Norwich (in the Chenango Valley, NY), where they started as itinerant miniature painters. Together they worked in the Chenango Valley during the late thirties, visiting Binghamton, Utica, Whitestown, and Ithaca. With the help and encouragement of attorney William Seward (later Governor of New York), the sister and brother opened a studio in the state capital at Albany around1842, gaining many prestigious portrait commissions over the next twenty years, even traveling to Washington (DC) in 1852 to paint portraits of President Millard Fillmore's family. In 1862, Maria and Daniel moved to NYC and, while Daniel continued to paint portraits, both also took up landscape and floral still-life painting. Maria also began to exhibit genre scenes. About 1869 they moved to Newburgh (NY) and by 1871 they had returned to Norwich (NY).

Fuentes: G&W; Norwich Semi-Weekly Telegraph, Jan. 25, 1888, obit. of Daniel Wagner (courtesy Anna Wells Rutledge); Cowdrey, NAD; Naylor, NAD; Swan, BA; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Rutledge, PA, vol. 1; Falk, PA, vol. 2; Antiques (Jan. 1933), 12. More recently, see Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 1, 185-86 (repro.) and Rubinstein, American Women Artists, 65-66.