Carroll Beckwith

James Carroll Beckwith grew up in Chicago in a family of grocers. His brothers worked in the family store, but James’s poor health left him with time to draw and paint. He moved to New York in 1871 and saved up enough money to go to Paris, where he felt that his “real life” began. Beckwith studied the old masters in France, Italy, and Belgium and continued to make copies of famous works his entire life. After returning to America, he taught drawing at the Art Students League and worked as a portrait painter. He did not approve of modernism, and wrote many articles denouncing the cubists, futurists, and pointillists as “mental maniacs.” (“The Worship of Ugliness,” New York Times, October 4, 1915)