Arthur Hoeber
(1854-1915)
ARTIST, AUTHOR, ART CRITIC AND LECTURER
Arthur Hoeber, an artist, author, art critic and lecturer, was a noted landscape artist in Tonalist style, with composition, broad skyscapes and serene, quiet, poetic views often inspired by coastal scenery of Cape Cod and Long Island. Luminism was a part of his painting style, which is characterized by the effects of bright lights on his landscapes, often appearing in his dramatic, panoramic cloud-filled skies.
His paintings were sometimes referred to as “spare meditations,” and usually his titles referenced the exact location of the work, the season or time of day. He also did figure and genre subjects including peasants toiling in the fields when he was painting in the French countryside.
Arthur Hoeber was born in New York City on July 23, 1854 and received his early education in Public School No. 35. As a young man, Hoeber did much sketching and painting in watercolor, and later took evening classes at Cooper Union in New York City later at the Arts Student League, where he studied under James Carrol Beckwith. In 1881, he went to England, having obtained a letter of introduction from an actor, Lew Wallack, to Wallack’s brother-in-law, the painter Sir John Millais.
At Millais’ suggestion, Hoeber went to France, where he attended Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris for five years and studied under the renowned teacher Jean Leon Gerome, one of the foremost historical painters of his era. Hoeber also studied privately under Gustave Courtois. From 1882 to 1885, he exhibited at the Salon in Paris and spent his summers in the Barbizon art colony painting in the countryside including Pont Aven and Concarneau. There, he painted landscapes and rural genre scenes with peasants and was known as a prominent contributor to most of the American exhibitions.
Upon returning to New York City in 1891, Hoeber began to paint almost exclusively landscape subjects and exhibit widely at venues including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, National Academy of Design, the Corcoran Gallery Biennial and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1892, he moved to Nutley, New Jersey, purchased land, and settled in the Enclosure. He was one of the first artists to build a studio home in the Enclosure, in the very heart of Nutley’s (thriving artists and writers’ colony.
While well known as a successful painter, Hoeber was also a well-respected writer and lecturer on art-related subjects. He wrote art criticism for The New York Evening Globe, The New York Journal, Harper’s Weekly and Commercial Advertiser. He was also the art director for The New York Times for three years, an assistant editor of the Illustrated American for one year, an elected associate of the National Academy of Design and a member of the Architectural League of New York and International Art Association of Chicago. His series on the great painters of history had been carried by all the major U.S. newspapers.
Hoeber also authored several books on 19th century painting. Among his writings are Treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Painting in the 19th Century in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy. In 1912, his final book was published, The Barbizon Painters: Being the story of the Men of Thirty, which paid tribute to “the art influences and impulses that had most deeply stirred him from his student days in France.”
Hoeber died April 29, 1915. After his death in 1915, every artist in Nutley donated a work of their art for an auction sale to raise money to purchase Hoeber’s painting, The Early Moon, from his widow Mary Hoeber. The Early Moon, a picture “of infinite beauty suggesting as it does the perfect repose of the hour” was then donated to the Nutley Public Library where it currently hangs above the Arthur Hoeber Bookcase, which holds books written by Nutley authors, including Hoeber himself. A self-portrait is also on view.
Today Hoeber’s work can be viewed in the Newark Museum, the Hudson River Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts and the Nutley Public Library.