America's first important painter of the romantic movement, Washington Allston (1779-1843) created landscapes, historical scenes, and literary pieces that exude dramatic terror as well as quiet mystery.

Washington Allston was born in South Carolina in 1779. After graduating from Harvard College in 1800, he returned to Charleston and sold his share of the family property to finance his career as an artist. In May 1801 Allston and the miniaturist painter Edward G. Malbone left for England.

Years in Europe

Allston studied at the School of the Royal Academy in London. He learned the use of underpainting and glazes to produce the rich atmospheric effect necessary to the realization of his later romantic paintings. Allston was in Paris in 1803-1804 and in Rome from 1804 to 1808, where he knew the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the American author Washington Irving. In Italy he especially admired the work of the great Venetian painters...