Joseph T. Pearson, Jr.

Joseph Thurman Pearson Jr. (February 6, 1876 – February 23, 1951) was an American landscape and portrait painter, and an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Life and career He was one of the eight children of wooden box manufacturer Joseph T. Pearson, Sr. and Annie Virginia Wells, and grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. He attended public schools, and worked as a draftsman in the office of architect Wilson Eyre, 1894–1896.

Pearson attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on scholarship, 1896–1901, where he studied under William Merritt Chase and Julian Weir. He also taught at PAFA's summer school in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. On the Valley (1916), University Club, Philadelphia. Awarded PAFA's 1916 Temple Gold Medal & Stotesbury Prize. The Twins: Virginia and Jane (1917), Michener Art Museum. Awarded PAFA's 1917 Beck Gold Medal; awarded AIC's 1918 Potter Palmer Award; awarded a Gold Medal at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exhibition. He attained early notoriety as a landscape painter for works influenced by Japanese art, and often featuring birds and animals. Among these was On the Valley, exhibited at PAFA in 1916: Joseph T. Pearson, Jr., has had his great moment this year; he reached a high note of achievement that does not often occur in the thorn-pricked paths of an artistic career. His "On the Valley" not only won the Edward T. Stotesbury prize for a painting never before exhibited—a prize which is awarded by the Directors—but he was also given the unanimous vote for the Temple gold medal by the painters' jury. The composition is distinctly decorative in treatment and very original in conception, with bare, sweeping hillsides, veiled in mist, in the distance, beneath which the still valley opens out before us. The arrangement of two geese and a haunting old tree-stump in the foreground realizes a special quality belonging to Mr. Pearson's art, and in the middle distance is suggestively shown a green bank and trees and a boat, broadly painted, flat in tone, remiscent perhaps of Puvis de Chavannes. There is much poetry and beauty in this picture and the artist has succeeded in making others feel as he felt, transversing the banks of the Schuylkill, the beautiful serenity of what lay before him not alone in the actual scene, but heightened by an impassioned imagination.

Pearson painted a trio of full-length portraits of his wife Emily, including Study in Gray (1905).

Pearson volunteered his skills during World War I, camouflaging ships at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. It was the same size— in height and in length—as Daniel Garber's lunette mural, A Wooded Watershed, installed opposite it.

Exhibitions, awards and honors A Group of Geese (1910), unlocated. Awarded PAFA's 1910 Fellowship Prize; awarded NAD's 1911 2nd Hallgarten Prize. Landscape (1911), unlocated. Awarded PAFA's 1911 Jennie Sesnan Medal; awarded NAD's 1915 George Inness Gold Medal. Pearson exhibited regularly at PAFA from 1904 to 1917, and sporadically thereafter. On the Valley was awarded its 1916 Temple Gold Medal, along with its $1,000 Edward T. Stotesbury Prize; and The Twins: Virginia and Jane was awarded its 1917 Beck Gold Medal.

He exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design from 1907 to 1918. A Group of Geese was awarded NAD's 1911 2nd Hallgarten Prize; Landscape was awarded its 1915 George Inness Gold Medal; and Spring was awarded its 1918 Saltus Medal for Merit. The Art Institute of Chicago awarded him its 1915 Norman Wait Harris Silver Medal (and $500 prize) for In the Gloaming; and its 1918 Potter Palmer Award (and $1,000 prize) for The Twins: Virginia and Jane. The Philadelphia Water Color Club awarded him its 1933 Joseph Pennell Medal. and The Twins: Virginia and Jane was awarded a gold medal at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The Woodmere Art Museum, in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, reunited the pair 31 years later, for a 1943 joint exhibition. Milch Galleries in New York City hosted a 1921 group exhibition of paintings by Daniel Garber, William Langson Lathrop, Robert Spencer and Pearson. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hosted a one-man exhibition of Pearson's drawings in 1937.

Pearson was elected an Associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1913, and an Academician in 1919.

Personal

On October 7, 1902, Pearson married Emily Fetter, also from Germantown. The couple moved into the house in which he had grown up, that they occupied until the end of World War I. He restored its 1790s manor house, and converted its 1797 stone barn into a studio. "After his move to Huntingdon Valley, in 1918, Pearson reduced his artistic output, probably spending more of his time restoring and renovating the stone buildings and landscaping the property to his liking."

Among Pearson's PAFA students were Ross Eugene Braught, William James Dow, Anne Goodell Lathrop, and Cesare A. Ricciardi.

At the invitation of one of Pearson's grandchildren, art dealer Roy Wood Jr. visited his studio in 1996, forty-five years after the artist's death. Portrait of his wife, Emily Fetter Pearson. Emily (1905), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Emily (1906), Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia Ruth (undated), unlocated. Ex collection: Corcoran Gallery of Art. Presented to NAD by Pearson, May 1, 1916. Awarded PAFA's 1917 Beck Gold Medal, AIC's 1918 Potter Palmer Award, and a Gold Medal at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition. The Pearson Family (1920?)

Landscapes with animals A Group of Geese (1910), unlocated. Awarded PAFA's 1910 Fellowship Prize, and NAD's 1911 2nd Hallgarten Prize. Fox and Geese (1910), National Academy of Design, New York City. Shared a gold medal at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Presented to NAD by Pearson's widow, Alice Kent Stoddard, May 21, 1952. Up with the Sun (1915), unlocated In the Gloaming (1916). Awarded AIC's 1916 Norman Wait Harris Silver Medal. On the Valley (1916), University Club, Philadelphia. Awarded PAFA's 1916 Temple Gold Medal and $1,000 Edward T. Stotesbury Prize, By the River (1916), Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia Winter (1916), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Spring (1918). Awarded NAD's 1918 Saltus Medal for Merit

Genre Germantown, Fall (1898), unlocated Over the Hedge (1906), private collection. View from the back yard of Pearson's Germantown house. Pheasant Hunters (1911), unlocated The Closed Shutter (1915), Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania Mural: Harvesting (1926), Pennsylvania Building, Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia Sorrow (Pieta) (1935), unlocated At the Foot of the Cross (1937), unlocated