Late 19th Century Art HL Hildabrant Tangiers Drawing

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H.L. Hildebradt artist 'Tangiers Market at Noon' (Morocco) ca 1890s

Howard Logan (H.L.) Hildebrandt (PA 1872-CT 1958) known for genre … Read more H.L. Hildebradt artist 'Tangiers Market at Noon' (Morocco) ca 1890s

Howard Logan (H.L.) Hildebrandt (PA 1872-CT 1958) known for genre scene, landscape, figure and portrait painting.
•. Art is behind glass
•. Pencil inscription on reverse… name and title
•. Dimensions
o Frame – 17.25” x 21.25”
o Art – 10” x 14.5”

Portraitist Howard Hildebrandt was born in the small town of Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), where his natural interest in people was evident from an early age.

Howard Hildebrandt went to work in an Allegheny stained-glass factory when he was fifteen. Three years later he came to New York to study at the National Academy of Design. He was enrolled for only one academic season, 1890-91, in both the antique and the life classes. He moved to Paris and the Académie Julian, where he worked under Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens, des Beaux-Arts.

Exactly when he returned to the United States is not clear, but in 1898, on his first appearance in an Academy annual exhibition, he gave an address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By 1902, when he next showed at the Academy, his address was one of the studios in New York's Carnegie Hall. One of the two works he exhibited was Portrait: Miss C., the subject of which might have been the miniature painter Cornelia Ellis (1876-1962), whom he married that same year.

By 1912, the Hildebrandts had established themselves in New York, and maintained a summer home in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Hildebrandt was a founding member of the Knockers Club, precursor of the Silvermine Guild. In 1924 he served as the guild's president. He was an active member of the National Academy, the Salmagundi Club, the American Watercolor Society, and, earlier in his career, the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. He exhibited from the 1890s-1930s, at the Paris Salon, National Academy, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery. Hildebrandt participated in almost every Academy exhibition, thereafter, always giving a New York address through 1948. Both Howard and Cornelia maintained a lifelong association was as members of the Silvermine Guild of Artists.

Like John Singer Sargent, Hildebrandt took great care with his backgrounds as he considered them an important part of the portrait. He demonstrated an imaginative and restrained use of color. He painted some outdoor scenes and was fond of doing outdoor and indoor portraits. One fishing scene, shown at the Herron Art Gallery in Indianapolis, was a watercolor portrait for which he won an American Watercolor Society prize. Hildebrandt was also awarded the Evans Prize and first honor, Associated Artists of Pittsburgh; the Brown-Bigelow gold medal of the Allied Artists of America; and the Purchase Prize of the Salmagundi Club.

Hildebrandt is represented with several oils in the Butler Art Institute of Youngstown, Ohio; by his painting The Sicilian Bandit; at Pennsylvania State College; a portrait of Dr. John M. Thomas, president of Rutgers University, at New York's Lotus Club; a portrait of Prof. Arthur J. Sweet in the Engineers Club; a self-portrait in the National Academy of Design and a number of portraits in the Silvermine Group of Artists room at the New Canaan (Connecticut) Historical Society Museum, most notably a portrait of fellow artist and Knocker, Daniel Putnam Brinley. Hildebrandt was an early member of the Silvermine Group of Artists (The Knockers 1908-1922) in the Silvermine area of Connecticut.

Hildebrandt had a long, successful career as a portraitist and was frequently commissioned to paint images of academic and corporate leaders. He also worked in landscape, figure subjects, and still life, examples of which were regularly among his contributions to Academy exhibitions. See less