biography of Christopher P. CRANCH (1813-1892)

Birth place: Alexandria, VA

Death place: Cambridge, MA

Addresses: Wash., DC; Staten Island, NY, 1863-73; Cambridge, MA, 1873-92

Profession: Portrait, landscape, and still life painter

Studied: Columbia College (now George Washington Univ.); Harvard Divinity School; Rome; Paris

Exhibited: Paris Salon, 1855, 1857, 1861; Brooklyn Art Assoc.; NAD ,1844-89; Boston Athenaeum; Boston AC, 1874-1880; PAFA; American Art-Union; AIC, 1889.

Member: N.A. (from 1864)

Work: CGA; Office of the Architect of the Capitol (oil view of the Capitol); NAD; BMFA

Comments: Brother of John Cranch (see entry). After graduation from Harvard in 1831, C.P. Cranch went into the Unitarian ministry, during the following decade serving congregations in Maine, Richmond, Washington, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and finally Boston. After 1840, however, he gave up the ministry for painting, and after a few years in NYC he left for Italy with his wife in 1846. They returned to NYC in 1849, but again left for Europe in 1853, this time spending ten years in Paris.

Sources: G&W; Miller, Christopher Pearse Cranch; DAB; Barker, American Painting, 536, cites Donora Cranch Scott's Life and Letters of C.P. Cranch; Cowdrey, NAD; Rutledge, PA; Swan, BA, 26; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Clement and Hutton; McMahan, Artists of Washington, D.C.; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 332; The Boston AC.

Legals