Highlights

August Laux (American, 1847 – 1921)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

Laux was born in Rhine Pfalz, Bavaria, in 1847 to French parents. An uncle and a cousin were sculptors in Paris and Laux began his art training in the Paris studio of his uncle, having been encouraged to work in clay. In 1863, the family immigrated to the New York City and the young Laux continued with the study of sculpture.

In 1867, Laux decided to switch from sculpture to painting and enrolled at the National Academy of Design. His first exhibited there in 1870. Circa 1873Laux was commissioned to design and paint the scenery for a private club in New York City; the success he experienced with that led to numerous other commissions for frescos and decorations in private homes, such as financier Jay Gould and the notorious Tammany Hall "Prince of Plasterers," Andrew Garvey, hotels and other buildings. Laux continued with his decorative work until 1880 when he began devoting his time to genre scene and still-life painting.

Laux painted delightful scenes of kittens engaged in typical “kitten mischief,” sometimes with mama cat keeping an eye on her little treasures. Wonderful little farm scenes with hens and chicks. Genre scenes of people posed in indoor or outdoor settings, plus some simple, but well-executed, landscapes. His fruit and flower still-lifes reflect the style that developed among some still-life painters, such as Levi Wells Prentice, during the 1870s and 1880s – who set their fruit and floral subjects against an outdoors backdrop. Laux adapted this style and often his still-lifes were painted to include a variety of fruits in baskets, perhaps with flowers, placed in a landscape-style setting. Sometimes it was only fruit or flowers that appear to have been simply dropped onto the ground.  His oeuvre also included flower and fruit still-life in a variety of containers sitting on a tabletop. Not as ostentatious as the Dutch still-life painters or as Pennsylvania’s Severin Roesen, but exquisitely painted.

Laux lived in Brooklyn, New York, and although he was not a member of the various art society and clubs, he exhibited at, in addition to the New York National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Brooklyn Art Association.  His works are displayed at the Heckscher Museum (Long Island NY), the Hickory Museum of Art (Hickory, NC) and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO).

Use only with the permission of Beford Fine Art Gallery.

References:

  1. America the Beautiful: 19th and 20th Century Paintings From the Walter and Lucille Rubin Collection, 2003, Boca Raton Museum of Art.
  2. Mo, Charles, L., 1994, North Carolina Collects, Traditional Fine Arts and Decorative Arts, Exhibition Catalogue, July 9 through September 18, 1994, Mint Museum of Art, Washington Graphics, Inc. Charlotte, North Carolina.
  3. https://newspaperarchive.com/new-york-tribune-jul-24-1921-p-32.
  4. Zellman, Michael, David, 1987, 300 Years of American Art, Volume I, pg. 421, Wellfleet Press.

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