The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Weir, Julian Alden

WEIR, Julian Alden, American artist, son of R. W. Weir (q.v.): b. West Point, N. Y., 30 Aug. 1852; d. New York, 8 Dec. 1919. He studied with his father and at Paris with Gérôme, became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1877 and a National Academician in 1886. Mr. Weir was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists, the first organization to rebel at all effectively against the Academy. These societies were later united and Mr. Weir at once refused the presidency of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors because it was in opposition to the Academy. He painted many kinds of pictures, subjects, still life, portraits, figures, landscapes. In his later career he was identified with the Impressionist School. Examples are to be found in the Luxembourg, Paris, and in nearly every important art museum in the United States, including the National Gallery, Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright Gallery, Buffalo, the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, and the Brooklyn Institute. ‘Breton Interior’ obtained a second-class medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889. His ‘Idle Hours,’ now in the New York Metropolitan Museum, received the $2,000 prize of the American Art Association. In the same gallery are ‘The Red Bridge’ and ‘The Green Bodice,’ the latter one of Weir's masterpieces. Weir's long career as an artist was marked by independence and naturalness. It was only after repeated experiments that he achieved the general recognition which the reticent, refined, and distinguished style of his maturity deserved.