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Lockwood de Forest
(1850-1932)
Lockwood de Forest was a turn-of-the-century artist and interior designer. Although best known for his designs of Indian and Middle Eastern furniture, Lockwood de Forest's true passion was painting. Landscapes from Egypt, Syria, Korea, Japan, Alaska, Mexico, Arizona and throughout the United States and Canada can be found among de Forest's nearly 1300 oil sketches and paintings.
Lockwood de Forest was born in New York on January 23, 1850, as the son of Henry G. and Julia Weeks de Forest. Encouraged by their parents, Lockwood and his three siblings were to develop lifelong interests in the arts. Although he had begun to paint and draw somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1869 that the nineteen-year-old Lockwood de Forest began to study art, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Herman Corrodi. More importantly, it was on this same trip that Lockwood adopted as his mentor the American painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), who was then on an extended stay abroad. According to de Forest, his affiliation with Church, a distant relation on his mother's side, was the strongest influence on his artistic maturation.
During his late twenties, de Forest made two extended sojourns abroad, in 1875-76 and 1877-78. These trips took him not only to the continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. From 1878 to about 1902, De Forest's landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities centered around his preoccupation with the Indian architecture and Orientalist styled decor that was fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-83, de Forest, along with Louis Comfort Tiffany (founder of the American Arts & Crafts movement) was a partner in the short-lived interior decorating firm of Associated Artists.
De Forest's work was exhibited to acclaim at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886 and at the World's Colombian Exhibition in Chicago seven years later, attracting an impressive array of clients: the transportation magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes, Chicago hotelier Potter Palmer, even Mark Twain. In 1885, he had published a book on Indian architecture, and in 1892-93 and in 1913 he made return trips to India. De Forest's passion for the Mogul art and architecture of the subcontinent led him to create widely admired Indian-style rooms: a dining room at Queen Victoria's 'Osborne House' on the Isle of Wight and a billiard room for her son the Duke of Connaught at his country house in Surrey, and 'Bagshot Park', now the home of Prince Edward. Unfortunately the end of the nineteenth century brought with it the end of the Orientalist style in decor and de Forest's Indian experiment.
By 1908, de Forest had sold his remaining stock of moldings and furniture to his old friend Tiffany, and turned his attention to landscape painting. He began to winter in Santa Barbara, California, sometime between 1889 and 1902, and eventually built a house there, settling permanently in 1922. During this time, he also made painting trips to Arizona, doing desert scenes and images of the Grand Canyon.
An extensive traveler, de Forest traveled to Alaska during the summer of 1912, where he painted coastal and glacier landscapes in which he attempted to capture the region's cold and mists. Some of these works were exhibited in 1988 at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, and recorded in the catalogue Lockwood de Forest: Alaska Oil Sketches co-authored by Professor Kesler E. Woodward of the University of Alaska. Currently, De Forest's art and interiors are enjoying a newfound interest.
Lockwood de Forest died in Santa Barbara on April 3, 1932, at the age of 82.
Sources:
Hughes, Edan M. Artists In California 1786-1940. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Sacramento: Crocker, Art Museum, 2002. N. pag. 2 vols. Print.
Falk,Peter H. Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
Kesler Woodward, Paintings in the North
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