We recently acquired this piece from a Northern California estate where the family had owned it for several decades. Similar works by Meeker can be found in the Louisiana State Museum and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA (see museum links below).
A painter of southern landscapes, Joseph Meeker was born in Newark, NJ April 21, 1827. He was raised in Auburn, NY and was the recipient of a scholarship to the National Academy of Design in New York City. There he studied with the Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand and the portraitist Charles Loring Elliott. He is best known for his bayou swamp scenes, but he did create other landscapes as well as portraits.
After his training in New York City he worked from a studio in Buffalo, NY from 1849-1852. The American Art Union of New York is known to have purchased some of his landscapes of the Buffalo area. In the winter of 1852 Meeker moved west and settled in Louisville, Kentucky. In his seven years there he painted views on the Ohio, Kentucky, and Salt rivers. He also gave art lessons in his studio.
In 1859 Meeker relocated to St. Louis, MO which by then was a rival to Cincinnati as a center of commerce. It also had a substantial art community and The Western Academy of Art was founded in St. Louis the year of Meeker's arrival. The stated purpose of the academy was to form a collection of art, establish an art school and to provide gallery space where artists could display their work. Other artists in the area at that time included Carl Wimar, Ferdinand Boyle, Manuel de Franca and Alban Jasper Conant.
During the Civil War he fulfilled his military duties as a Union Navy paymaster on a gunboat that traveled the Mississippi River. While traveling along the Mississippi River he sketched the bayous and swamps of Louisiana. The humid landscape of swamp and bayou made a profound impression upon him which would influence his production for the rest of his life.
When Meeker returned to St. Louis he became quite successful as a painter of southern landscapes based upon the drawings he did while in the military. During the 1870s and 1880s, he worked in the manner of Luminism and was known for capturing the hazy atmospheric light of the swampy environment. He traveled extensively in the summer months to the upper Mississippi River, the Adirondack Mountains, Colorado, and Wyoming.
At the St. Louis Exposition and Fair of 1878, Meeker exhibited five paintings, two of which were scenes of the Mississippi delta region and three of which were scenes on the upper Mississippi. He also exhibited his work in several St. Louis art galleries. A founding member of the St. Louis Art Society in 1872, he served several terms as its president before the organization dissolved in 1880.
After a full and successful career as a painter of the southern and western landscape, Meeker died at his St. Louis home on September 27, 1887.
Museums:
Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover MA)
Louisian State Museum (Natchitoches, LA)
Louisiana State University Museum of Art (Baton Rouge, LA)
Morris Museum of Art (Augusta, GA)
