biografia di John Archibald I WOODSIDE (1781-1852)

Birth place: Phila.

Death place: Phila.

Addresses: Phila., 1805-52

Profession: Sign and ornamental painter; still life and animal pictures

Studied: may have learned the trade of sign painting from Matthew Pratt (see entry).

Exhibited: PAFA , 1817-36

Member: Artists' Fund Soc.

Work: MMA; Ins. Co. of North Am.; Hist. Soc. Penn.; Phila. MA

Comments: He was one of the most celebrated art-sign painters of the Federal period, and his work was greatly admired by his contemporaries, including William Dunlap (see entry) who wrote in his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in America (1834) that Woodside "paints signs with talent beyond many who paint in higher branches." Woodside"s sons, Abraham and John A. Woodside, Jr., were also artists (see entries).

Sources: G&W; Jackson, John A. Woodside, Philadelphia's Glorified Sign-painter"; Trenton State Gazette, March 1, 1852, obit.; Phila. CD 1805-52; Rutledge, PA; Swan, BA; Dunlap, History, II, 471; Antiques (Sept. 1946), 158, repro.; Art Digest (Aug. 1, 1950), 8, repro.; Connoisseur (April 1953), 68; Sherman, "Some Recently Discovered Early American Portrait Miniaturists," 295, repro.; McCausland, "American Still-life Paintings," repro.; Chamberlain, "A Woodside Still Life"; Flexner, The Light of Distant Skies; P&H Samuels, 537; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 90"