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Ferdinand Richardt (1819-1895)
Richardt was impressed by the grandiose hotels he encountered at the tourist sites in America. The hotels served as elegant architectural settings for the human gatherings he enjoyed painting, where the elite classes paraded their finery and made important social connections. Several hotel paintings were included in his 1859 exhibtion held at the National Academy of Design, and others are now known. Most of these paintings were set within panoramic mountain landscapes. By 1860 Richardt was back in Copenhagen displaying his American “prospects” to the Danish public. During the next decade he married, exhibited annually at Denmark’s Charlottenborg salon, and traveled to Italy and England. In 1873, he immigrated with his family to the United States, stopping at Niagara, and arriving in San Francisco in 1875. On the West Coast he specialized in Bay Area marine and city views, as well as dramatic accounts of the redwood groves, so characteristic of that region. Several fine canvases of Yosemite valley are known. In 1876 he moved to Oakland and maintained a vigorous teaching schedule on both sides of the Bay through the 1880s. In this country Richardt exhibited at New York’s Stuyvesant Institute (1857) and the National Academy of Design (1859), at the Buffalo Academy of Arts (1874), and at the Mechanic’s Institute and the San Francisco Art Association during the 1870s and 1880s. His works are held today by the White House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum of California, the U.S. Department of State, and many other American museums and private collections. His works are also held by Denmark’s National Gallery of Art, Thorvaldsens Museum, Frederiksborg Castle, and elsewhere. References
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Ferdinand Richard was born in Denmark and studied at the
Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen.