Ernest Clifford Peixotto (1869-1940) (artist)
San Gimignano
Italy: 1924
Pen and ink on illustration board
Titled on mat lower left and verso, and signed lower left: E.C. Peixotto 1924
14.5 x 11.25 inches, image
18.5 x 12.75 inches, overall
22 x 18 inches, mat
Provenance: Estate of the artist
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.
San Gimignano
Ernest Clifford Peixotto
Ernest Clifford Peixotto
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Stipple and line drawing of the town of San Gimignano in the heart of Tuscany, Italy. The viewpoint looks up a path at the sunlit planes of the architecture built into the hillside. Some of the structures depicted, including the towers, date back to the 11th and 13th centuries. Peixotto’s skillful depictions of architecture won him an honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects. Peixotto was also closely associated with the American Composer Timothy Mather Spelman (1891-1970) and his wife, poet Leolyn Louise Everett Spellman (1888-1971), whose Villa Razzolini was a gathering place for artists and intellectuals visiting Italy.
Ernest Clifford Peixotto was a muralist, painter and illustrator. Born in San Francisco, he studied at the San Francisco School of Design and continued his studies for seven years in Paris at the Académie Julian. From 1897 the peripatetic Peixotto divided his time between New York City and a villa at Fontainebleau, France, while continuing to maintain ties to California. His multi-faceted career not only included many locales but varied media and genres; he worked in oils, watercolor, and pen-and-ink, executed mural commissions in public buildings in New York, and was a prolific and highly paid magazine and book illustrator for such publications as Harper’s and Scribner’s and books by Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. He also authored and illustrated several books including Our Hispanic Southwest (1916) and Romantic California (1927).
Peixotto’s subjects included genre, history and landscapes. During World War I, General John Pershing appointed him an official artist for the American Expeditionary forces. After the war he directed the Department of Mural Painting at the Beaux Art Institute of New York for seven years. He later served as Chairman of the American Committee for the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France. Peixotto exhibited widely during his lifetime in New York, the Paris Salon (he won a prize in 1921) and California and joined a number of prestigious artist’s societies, including the Salmagundi Club and the Society of Illustrators. He became a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1921 and an officer in 1924. Today his works are in the collection of the National Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art among others.
References:
Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. Who Was Who in American Art. Madison, Connecticut: Sound View Press, 1985. p. 477.
“San Gimignano: A Brief History.” San Gimignano. http://www.sangimignano.com/sstoriai.htm (27 July 2004).
“Views from a Villa: The Spelman Legacy.” The Sheridan Library of the Johns Hopkins University. 9 November 2000. http://www.library.jhu.edu/librarydean/exrel/whatsnew/press/archives/pressrel00/nov9-00.html (27 July 2004).