Frank de Haven, Sunset Landscape

FRANK DE HAVEN

Sunset Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1910

Frank DeHaven was born in Bluffton, Indiana (date unknown). He came to New York in 1886 and studied with George Henry Smillie. He was one of several artists who painted shoreline scenes on Long Island and in Massachusetts. In his father’s obituary in 1915 there were flowery descriptions of the rest of the family. Frank DeHaven was described as “the well-known landscape painter of New York City”. In another amazing passage the unknown author states: “It is not surprising to find latter-day Hudson River School influences, and an intense Barbizon, or more specifically, Tonalist sensibility in much of DeHaven’s work.” DeHaven was also known as an accomplished violin maker. He and his wife traveled extensively through the United States always searching for new places to paint.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley