Julie Hart Beers, Hudson River at Croton Point, 1869.Julie Hart Beers, Forest Interior, 1876.
Julie Hart Beers Kempson (1835 – August 13, 1913) was an American landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School who was one of the very few commercially successful professional women landscape painters of her day.[1]
In 1853, she married journalist George Washington Beers. After his death in 1856 she and her two daughters moved to New York City, where her brothers had their studios.[1] Like most women artists of the day, she had no formal art education, but it is thought that she was trained by her brothers.[1][4]
Well into her forties, with her second husband, Peter Kempson, she moved to Metuchen, New Jersey, where she set up her own studio.[1][2][5] She continued to use the surname Beers when signing her artwork.[1]
At the time of her death she was living in Trenton.[2]
By 1867, Beers was exhibiting her paintings.[2] Although she had her own studio in New Jersey, she continued to use William's studio on 10th Street in New York City as a showroom.[5] She was one of very few women to become a professional landscape painter in the America of her day, in part because women were excluded from formal art education and exhibition opportunities.[1][6]
Beers's mature style balances sweeping, well-balanced compositions with telling details.[4] In the 1870s and 1880s, she exhibited frequently at the National Academy of Design[1] as well as at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Boston Athenæum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.[4] She was able to sell a good deal of work through the Brooklyn Art Association,[5] but she also took groups of women on sketching trips to the mountains of New York and New England to supplement her income.[4]
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