19 Facts About Fernand Lungren

Fernand Lungren is mostly known for his paintings of American South Western landscapes and scenes as well as for his earlier New York and European city street scenes.

Fernand Lungren is famous for his vibrantly colored paintings of the Southern California desert, especially in the Death Valley and Mojave Desert area, which remarkably express the immensity, colors and solitude of these landscapes.

Fernand Lungren showed an early talent for drawing but his father induced him to pursue a professional career and in 1874 entered the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to study mining engineering.

At the age of 19, and following a dispute with his father, Lungren was finally permitted to enrol at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied under Thomas Eakins and Robert Frederick Blum.

Fernand Lungren studied briefly in Cincinnati and in 1882, he furthered his studies in Paris at the Academie Julian, but only remained there for brief period, abandoning formal study for direct observation of Parisian street life.

In 1877, now twenty years old, and upon completion of his studies, Fernand Lungren moved to New York City.

Fernand Lungren was an illustrator for the children's magazine, Saint Nicholas from 1879 to 1904 and later for Harper's, McClure's and The Outlook.

In 1882, Fernand Lungren traveled to Paris with Robert Frederick Blum.

In Paris, Fernand Lungren enrolled briefly at the Academie Julian and saw French Impressionist artists at work.

Fernand Lungren spent eight months in Santa Fe, New Mexico, visiting the Indian pueblos, and the next year spent several months living with the Hopi Indians in Arizona.

Fernand Lungren was eventually made a member of several Indian tribes and priesthoods.

In 1895, Fernand Lungren created illustrations of the Moquis, Navajo, and Apache people for Harper's Magazine.

Fernand Lungren married Henrietta Coflin Whipple in 1898, then spent three years in London, England.

Fernand Lungren met many prominent artists in London, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler, with whom the couple became good friends.

Fernand Lungren participated in shows at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

In 1909, Fernand Lungren made his first of many trips to the Death Valley and Mojave Desert region, North East of Los Angeles, California, where he focused on scenes of the desert in all conditions of weather, seasonal change and time of the day, producing several famous paintings of these landscapes, with often poetic rendition of the specific desert atmosphere.

The Mountains, The Pass - Mountaineering Through the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries and Camp and Trail, based on the experience he had acquired when staying and painting in New Mexico and Arizona, while, in return, Stewart Edward White wrote the foreword for the first Fernand Lungren biography written by John A Berger and published in 1936.

An important figure in the Southern California art scene in the early twentieth century, Fernand Lungren helped found the Santa Barbara School of the Arts in 1920 with the sponsorship of the Community Arts Association of Santa Barbara.

Fernand Lungren remained a resident of Santa Barbara until his death in 1932.