Enoch Wood Perry, Jr.

Enoch Wood Perry, Jr. was an American painter. He was born in Boston in 1831 and moved to New Orleans with his family as a teenager. After working several years as a clerk in a commission house, Perry began formal art education. In 1852 he went to Europe for four years and studied with Emanuel Leutze at the Düsseldorf Academy, Thomas Couture in Paris, and in Venice and Rome. Perry also traveled to Venice, where he served as the U.S. Consul between 1856 and 1858. Upon returning to America, he opened a studio in Philadelphia.

On the eve of the American Civil War, Perry arrived in New Orleans and opened a studio. In 1861 Perry completed a portrait of Jefferson Davis posed before a map of the Confederate States of America, which was raffled off at a fair with the proceeds benefiting the southern war effort.

He traveled to northern California, where he spent several years sketching and painting with Albert Bierstadt, taking special interest in the magnificence of Yosemite Valley. In 1864, Perry sailed to Honolulu, with the idea of painting the wonders of nature there, and was well received. He traveled to most of the islands, and painted landscapes and portraits, including posthumous images of King Kamehameha IV and his young son Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Leiopapa a Kamehameha, as well as notable Hawaiian landscapes. Perry died in New York City in 1915.

The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Bishop Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Louisiana State Museum (New Orleans) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are among the public collections holding works by Enoch Wood Perry.

References

* Forbes, David W., "Encounters with Paradise: Views of Hawaii and its People, 1778-1941", Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1992, 92-176.