Frank Myers Boggs (1855-1926)

Frank Myers Boggs was born in Springfield, Ohio, but left Ohio in 1876 for study with Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He lived in Paris and New York, residing the last thirty years of his life in Paris. In Paris he won wide recognition for his atmospheric paintings of the ports of France and the quays along the Seine. His works were exhibited frequently in France. Between 1879 and 1916, his work was also shown in the United States, most often at the National Academy of Design, in New York, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia.

Known as a master of plein-air painting, Boggs delighted in capturing the fleeting effects of the constantly changing skies of northern France and southern England. With lush and broad brush strokes, Boggs created rich and spacious paintings, orchestrating a subtle and restrained palette of grays, deep and dusty blues, and earthy tans. Although his palette is more subtle and tonal than that of the French Impressionist Claude Monet, Boggs’ paintings demonstrate clear affinities with the early French Impressionist school. Like his fellow Impressionists, it was the transitory aspects of nature, as well as the documentation of everyday reality, to which Boggs was keenly sensitive.

Selected Permanent Collections:
Brooklyn Museum
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Luxembourg Museum, Paris
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Montreal Museum of Art, Canada
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Nantes, France
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Springfield Art Museum, Ohio

Source: James M. Keny and Nannette V. Maciejeunes, Triumph of Color and Light: Ohio Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art, 1994, 35-36, 98-99.

See also: Michael Quick, American Expatriate Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century, exh. cat., Dayton, Ohio, Dayton Art Institute, 1971; and David Sellin, Americans in Brittany and Normandy (1860-1910), exh. cat., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1982.

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