15 Facts About Worthington Whittredge

Thomas Worthington Whittredge was an American artist of the Hudson River School.

Worthington Whittredge traveled widely and excelled at landscape painting, many examples of which are now in major museums.

Worthington Whittredge served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1875 and was a member of the selection committees for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and the 1878 Paris Exposition, both important venues for artists of the day.

Worthington Whittredge was born in a log cabin on the farm of his father, Captain Joseph Worthington Whittredge, near the Little Miami River not fifty miles northeast of Springfield, Ohio, in 1820.

Worthington Whittredge briefly made daguerrotypes and for a span of a few years painted portraits while traveling the country but soon became dissatisfied.

In 1843, Worthington Whittredge returned to Cincinnati where he began as a landscape artist, learning much himself, but learned from other artists in his area, whether they lived there or were simply passing through.

Worthington Whittredge wanted to visit Europe and obtained many advance orders on paintings, so that he would have work once he arrived in the foreign land.

At Dusseldorf, Worthington Whittredge befriended Bierstadt and posed for Leutze as both George Washington and a steersman in Leutze's famous painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Worthington Whittredge is associated with the Dusseldorf school of painting.

Worthington Whittredge spent nearly ten years in Europe, meeting and traveling with other important artists including Sanford Gifford.

Worthington Whittredge returned to the United States in 1859 and settled in New York City where he launched his career as a landscape artist painting in the Hudson River School style.

Worthington Whittredge journeyed across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains in 1865 with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett.

Worthington Whittredge moved to Summit, New Jersey, in 1880 where he continued to paint for the rest of his life.

Worthington Whittredge died in 1910 at the age of 89 and was buried upon his death in the Springfield, New Jersey cemetery.

Worthington Whittredge's paintings are held in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.