Biography
William T. Dannat was born in 1853 at Hempstead, New York the younger of two boys raised by William H. and Susan (née Jones) Dannat. His father was a successful lumber dealer who, with Charles E. Pell, founded the firm Dannat and Pell. Later William’s older brother David would succeed their father as a partner in the firm.
At around the age of twelve Dannat's parents decided to send him to Germany to further his education. He would later study architecture at Hanover and Stuttgart before choosing instead to become an artist. Dannat attended art classes at the Munich Royal Academy of Fine Arts and later under Mihaly Munkacsy in Paris. Dannat became an accomplished draughtsman and a distinguished figure and portrait painter. He early attracted attention with sketches and pictures made in Spain, and a large composition, The "Quatuor Espagno", that was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was one of the successes of the Paris Salon of 1884. Dannat later settled in Paris, where he taught at the Académie Julian. He was influenced by a number of masters including, Carolus Duran and Munkacsy, though more by the latter as can be observed in his paintings "Contrebandier Aragonais," and in the "Quatuor Espagnol,"
Though at one time his name was mentioned alongside other great American painters such as Sargent and Whistler, Dannat’s popularity was more in Europe than his homeland. As he approached middle age the financially secure artist began to devote more and more of his time to other interest, fencing, boxing and later automobile racing. For nearly twenty years Dannat ceased painting and when he resumed around 1913 his art had adopted a more surrealistic style with illusionary landscapes and bizarre themes. During his hiatus from painting Dannat spent much of his time touring Europe studying the techniques of the great masters while remaining active in artistic circles in Paris where he served at one time as the president of the Society of American Painters.
William Turner Dannat died in 1929, aged 75, while at Monte Carlo.
Read more about this topic: William Turner Dannat
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)