Washington Allston

Washington Allston (1779-1843), American painter and poet, considered the country's first major landscapist, who introduced the art movement known as Romanticism to the United States. Allston's subjective landscapes were forerunners of those painted by members of the Hudson River School of artists.

Born near Georgetown, South Carolina, Allston studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; at the Royal Academy in London, England, under the American-born painter Benjamin West; in Paris, France; and in Italy. Apart from his periods of study abroad, he worked primarily in and around Boston, Massachusetts.

From the vividly dramatic Rising of a Thunderstorm at Sea (1804) to the luminous serenity of the landscape Moonlight (1819), both in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Allston's paintings reveal his subjective interpretation of nature and his taste for the marvellous and the mysterious. His historical scenes, such as The Deluge (1804, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and the vast, unfinished Belshazzar's Feast (1817-1843, Detroit Institute of Arts), are charged with fantasy.

See also American Art and Architecture.