Mississippi Panorama,
circa 1842-1853
Robert Brammer
(1811-1853)
View Artist Bio
Oil on canvas
29 x 36 inches
Period Frame
Status: Private Collection, Mississippi
Born in Waterford, Ireland, Robert Brammer was one of a number of nineteenth century European artists who ventured to America and, inspired by the country’s beauty and opportunity, chose to remain. Surviving works and written records document the artist’s stays in Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Brammer was in Louisville around 1839 to 1841, collaborating with Augustus A. Von Smith; this partnership had relocated to New Orleans by 1842, where the artist remained until his death.
Though he initially worked as a portrait painter, Brammer is best known as one of the earliest painters to represent the Southern regional landscape. He was lauded as an artist of “rare attainments” and for the “blended hues” of his canvases, typically executed in warm earth tones and depicting the lush marsh and waterways with great detail and a refined technique. An exceptional example of Brammer’s mature style, Mississippi Panorama exhibits a confluence of both European and American landscape influences. The work’s clarity, radiance, and celebration of the natural topography are traits characteristic of the American school, while the controlled technique is more typical of a European aesthetic.
Brammer summered in Biloxi, Mississippi, where he died unexpectedly in 1853. His work received acclaim both during his lifetime and posthumously. An 1853 article in the Daily Orleanian described his paintings as: “the very embodiment of true poetry, glowing with all of fervid genius. . . . He was the poetry of art: nature had implanted in his soul an intense love of its boundless beauties, and genius guided his hand and pencil to depict them in nature’s colors, with such truth as imparted to the artist’s work a life like beauty, only achieved, where poet and artist are combined.”
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