Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Niemeyer, John Henry

NIEMEYER, John Henry (ne-mire), artist, b. in Bremen, Germany, 25 June, 1839. He came to the United States in 1846, residing in Cincinnati, and studied in Paris in 1866-'70 under Jean Léon Gérôme and Adolphe Yvon at the École des beaux arts, in the studio of Louis Jacquesson de la Chevreuse, and also, for some time, in that of Sebastian Cornu. He received three medals in the government schools of Paris. After his studies in Europe he was appointed in 1871 professor of drawing in the Yale school of fine arts. He has painted various genre pictures and portraits, among the best of which are “Gutenberg inventing Movable Type” (1862); a portrait of Theodore D. Woolsey (1876); “The Braid,” “Where?” “Why?” (1880); and “Sancta Simplicitas” (1882). He has also executed some bas-reliefs, among them a large medallion portrait of William M. Hunt (1883) and “Lilith tempting Eve” (1883).