©2003 Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.
The Weir Family Papers, along with paintings, drawings, and prints, came to the university following the death of Mahonri Young in 1957. They were filed together with the Dorothy Weir Young Papers (MSS 1291) and the Mahonri M. Young Papers (MSS 4) as the Weir-Young Collection until 1977, at which time three separate collections were created.
Copyright resides with the Weir family. All the information in the collection is accessible to researchers, but use of the original papers is restricted. Researchers must use the microfiche which is in box 5, fd. 13.
It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain any necessary copyright clearances. Copyright resides with the Weir family.
Permission to publish material from Weir Family Papers must be obtained from the Supervisor of Reference Services and/or the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Board of Curators.
Robert W. Weir was born on Jun 18, 1803, in New York City, the son of a Scottish immigrant. He grew up working in offices and mills, but his ambition in life was to become an artist. Weir was about twenty when he had his first instruction in art from John Wesley Jarvis and from an English heraldic artist, Robert Cook. In 1824 he traveled to Italy for three years of study. In Florence he worked with Pietro Benvenuti (1769-1844), Italian portrait, decorative fresco, and religious painter, and in Rome he lived with Horatio Greenough, the American sculptor.
Back in New York City he made his debut at the National Academy of Art with his landscape entitled View at Belleville. In 1828 he was made an associate academician of that institution and in 1831 was elected a full academician.
Best known as a teacher, Weir spent forty-two years (1834-1876) as professor of drawing at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His students there included such varied figures as generals Grant and Lee, and painter J.A.M. Whistler, in addition to his two artist sons, John Ferguson Weir and Julian Alden Weir. After his retirement from West Point in 1876, he moved back to New York City, where he continued to paint until his death in 1889.
As a romantic painter of landscapes, portraits, and literary and religious scenes, Weir's reputation grew quickly, and in the years before he went to West Point he worked in the company of leading American artists and exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design. He was artistically among the best educated of American painters, yet he seldom achieved true success as an artist: his work is eclectic and he seems never to have settled on a style or a type of subject that he could develop fully. He saw himself primarily as a history painter in the tradition of Benjamin West, and he is best known for his Embarkation of the Pilgrims, painted for the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D. C. However, his craftsmanship is better seen in more modest paintings such as Microscope (1849, Yale) and View of the Hudson (1869, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard).
As a romantic painter of landscapes, portraits, and literary and religious scenes, Weir's reputation grew quickly, and in the years before he went to West Point he worked in the company of leading American artists and exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design. He was artistically among the best educated of American painters, yet he seldom achieved true success as an artist: his work is eclectic and he seems never to have settled on a style or a type of subject that he could develop fully. He saw himself primarily as a history painter in the tradition of Benjamin West, and he is best known for his Embarkation of the Pilgrims, painted for the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D. C. However, his craftsmanship is better seen in more modest paintings such as Microscope (1849, Yale) and View of the Hudson (1869, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard).
In 1829 Weir married Louisa Ferguson, who bore him nine children before her death in 1845. A year later he married Susan Martha Bayard, who bore him seven more children. Susan was the daughter of Lewis Pintard Bayard (1791-1840), an Episcopal clergyman and rector of St. Clement's Church in New York City.
Of Robert Weir's sixteen children, three died in infancy, leaving eight sons: Robert F., Walter, Charles E. Henry, William Bayard, Gulian Verplanck, John Ferguson, and Julian Alden; and five daughters: Louisa (who married General Truman Seymour), Emma (who married General Thomas Lincoln Casey), Carrie, Nellie, and Anne. (See below for Weir Family genealogy.)
John F. Weir was a painter and teacher best remembered as the long-time director of the Yale School of Fine Arts. He was educated at West Point and received art instruction from his father, Robert W. Weir. In 1861 he moved to the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York, where he came to know the leading American painters. During this decade Weir was at his height as an artist; in 1866 he was elected to the National Academy of Design on the basis of one of the first American industrial pictures, The Gun Foundry (1866, Putnam County Historical Society, Cold Spring, N.Y.), a boldly painted view of men at work in the hot, glowing interior of a factory. After spending a year in Europe and painting a number of charming small oil sketches of landscape views that suggest the influence of Frederic Church, he took on the Yale directorship in 1869 and held the post until 1913. Though he continued to paint in his later years, his output consisted of academic portraits and increasingly impressionist landscapes, and his most important achievements stem from his administrative efforts, such as the acquisition in 1871 of the James Jarves collection of early Italian paintings.
J. Alden Weir was born at West Point Aug 30, 1852, the fourteenth child and youngest son of Robert W. Weir. He had a natural inclination for art, drawing and sketching regularly as a child even before he received any training in art from his father.
Following a stint at the National Academy of Design (during which he began a lifelong friendship with Albert P. Ryder), he went to Paris in 1873, where he studied with Jean-Lion Girime and was influenced to work directly from nature by Bastien-Lepage. During the next ten years he made several trips to Europe, seeking out Edouard Manet, three of whose paintings he purchased, and J.A.M. Whistler, whom he called "a first class specimen of an eccentric man."
Always interested in broadening the opportunities for the exhibition of paintings and in furthering the cause of American art, Weir was a founding member of the Society of American Artists. He also worked within the framework of the National Academy, which he joined in 1885 and served as president in 1915-1917. About 1890 Weir began to experiment with the technique of impressionism and two years later to teach summer classes at Cos Cob, Connecticut, with John Twachtman, his closest friend, and also an impressionist. Weir was one of the founding members of a group known as "Ten American Painters," or "The Ten," from their first exhibition in 1898. As a virtual "academy of American impressionism", one of their aims was to promote the works of American impressionists rather than accept French impressionism as the standard. Despite his association with the establishment, his work was personal and experimental, and he remained receptive to the newer movements in art. Late in 1911, as the Association of American Painters and Sculptors laid plans for the Armory Show of 1913, he was elected president in the hope that such an eminent figure would unite the many factions. When the press played up the hostility of the Association to the Academy, Weir resigned, although he contributed to the exhibition in 1913.
Weir's work was stamped with what the collector and art writer Duncan Phillips termed a "reticent idealism," at the same time that it reflected the variety of an inquiring, liberal mind. His prolific output included portraits, figure studies, landscapes, a mural decoration at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and work in stained glass, etching, and watercolors. His Idle Hours (1888, Metropolitan) won a $2000 prize from the American Art Association. It shows a relaxed but carefully composed interior flooded by light from the windows. The smoothly applied pigment contrasts with the broken brushwork and higher key of such impressionist works as The Red Bridge (1895, Metropolitan). Through his painting, ranging from the subdued grayed harmonies of A Gentlewoman (National Coll.) to the sun-flecked impressionism of Visiting Neighbors (1900-09, Phillips), the integrity of his quiet, individual vision is manifest. Other well-known works include The Orchid (1899, Mrs. Ian MacDonald), Portrait of Albert Pinkham Ryder (1902, National Academy of Design), and The Factory Village (1897, Mrs. Charles Burlingham).
J. Alden Weir married Anna Dwight Baker on 24 Apr 1883 and lived very happily with her until her death in Feb of 1892. The next year Weir married Anna's sister Ella, who took over the dual responsibilities of wife to J. Alden and mother to Anna's children. One of J. Alden Weir's children by his first marriage, Dorothy, later married the American artist Mahonri Young.
J. Alden Weir experienced ill health for the last several months of his life and finally passed away in his New York home on Dec 8, 1919. Because the bulk of this collection relates to J. Alden Weir, a chronology of his life is also included here.
The above biographical information was adapted from various sources with heaviest reliance on The Britannica Encyclopedia of American Art (Chicago, 1974), pp. 589-591.
For additional biographical information see Dorothy Weir Young, The Life and Letters of J. Alden Weir, edited with an introduction by Lawrence W. Chisolm (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), and Doreen Bolger Burke, J. Alden Weir, An American Impressionist (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983). A reference copy of the latter is available in the Archives and Manuscripts Reading Room.
Also helpful are the following publications, copies of which are
available in the register file of the Department of Archives and Manuscripts.
This collection consists primarily of the papers of J. Alden Weir, which include a significant accumulation of letters from family, colleagues, and personal friends; catalogues and bulletins from various Weir exhibits; articles and speeches by Weir as president of the National Academy of Design; and both originals and reproductions of his work as an artist. The originals consist almost entirely of sketches (origin, date, and place unknown) that were placed in two scrapbooks by his daughter, Dorothy (see separation statement below).
In addition to the papers of J. Alden Weir, the collection contains papers of other Weir family members, including J. Alden's grandfather, the Reverend Lewis Pintard Bayard; his brother John Ferguson Weir; his first and second wives, Anna Dwight Baker Weir and Ella Baker Weir; his father, Robert Walker Weir, and his paternal grandfather, Robert Weir. Of these smaller collections of material, a significant segment was created by his sister Louisa Weir Seymour, who kept an extensive series of diaries during several years spent in Europe. Sketches and photos are included in these journals. Certificates, letters, and self-authored poetry compose the papers of Robert Walter Weir. Miscellaneous items such as account books, scrapbooks, wedding invitations, and notes may also be found in the collection.
The papers are arranged under the creator's name, in the following order: Robert Weir, John Brinkley Weir, Robert Walter Weir, Lewis Pintard Bayard, Bayard Family, Rufus L. Baker, Susan Martha Bayard Weir, Anna Bartlett Dwight Baker, Louisa Weir Seymour, William Bayard Weir, John Ferguson Weir, Carrie M. Weir, Gulian Verplanck Weir, Harry Weir Casey, William Bayard Weir, Julian Alden Weir, Anna Dwight Weir, Ella Baker Weir.
A book written by Robert Fulton Weir entitled Personal Reminiscences of the New York Hospital from 1865 to 1900 was transferred to Special Collections. A clipping of an article by Esther Julia Pels entitled "Art for Whose Sake?" The American Legion Magazine, Oct 1955, was discarded. All photographs were transferred to the Photoarchives, where they are available as The Weir Family Photograph Collection, MssP 78. A separate inventory of the photographs is included in the appendix to this register.
Two scrapbooks containing sketches by J. Alden Weir were transferred to the BYU Museum Collection, where their contents were added to an extensive and much larger collection of Weir sketches. A detailed inventory of their contents compiled by the museum staff is available in the register file for this collection.
"Received 20 Aug 1855." Contains newspaper articles concerning the death of Susan B. Weir and the death of Robert W. Weir; "Thoughts inscribed to Robert W. Weir on hearing of the intention of that Artist to abandon Landscape Painting" by John Waters' other references to the work of Robert Weir, especially his "Embarkation of the Pilgrims."
For original of scrapbook "received 20 Aug 1855," see box 1, fd. 13.
This is a mature woman's journal, begun in 1875 when she was
age 58 and continued until 1892, three years after her husband's death and
eight years prior to her own. The first year of the journal was kept while she
lived at West Point and the remainder while she lived in New York City and
Garrison, New York. It is a detailed daily journal recounting family events,
business, visits, correspondence, achievements and relationships, as well as
the social and cultural activities in which she and other family members were
involved. As an accomplished woman " the daughter of a clergyman, the wife of a
prominent artist, and the mother of two distinguished artists " as well as
mother of seven and stepmother of nine, there was much family news to record.
Her regular, detailed and occasionally poignant entries reveal candidly the
depth of her feelings and capture also the inner spirit and tone of the Weir
and Bayard families.
These travel journals contain entries written several times
weekly. In addition to photographs pasted to pages of the journals, several
loose photographs (found primarily in the later journals) have been removed,
put in envelopes, and placed at the back of the journal in which they were
found. Dates on the back of each photograph represent the date of the entry
where they were found. It has not been determined whether the dates given are
the dates on which the photographs were taken. The journal entries deal with
the day-to-day activities and excursions of Louisa and her husband, Truman
Seymour. Their extended stay allowed for visits to many historical and scenic
places. Several pressed plants and flowers were removed from pages of the
journal and transferred to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum for
preservation.
The last letter of the folder is from 13-year-old Cora (Weir), probably to Anna D. Baker, her grandmother. However, it could have been written to her other grandmother, Susan Martha Bayard Weir. Several of the letters were sent from Paris and Versailles, some to Calcutta, and concern Anna Baker (Mrs. C. T. Baker) and Ella Baker's trip to Calcutta.
Made by sister-in-law Anna C. Weir, wife of Robert Fulton Weir. Six envelopes contain loose papers found between pages of the book. News clippings were photocopied and originals discarded.
Two from father, Robert W. Weir, and one from L. Earle Rowe,
director of the Rhode Island School of Design
Partial account of a trip by train from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Los Angeles, California, via Denver, Colorado, and back to Cheyenne again.
Contains obituary notices and photographs. Photocopies of the pages may be found in box 3, fd. 3. Loose original newspaper clippings have been photocopied and discarded; pressed flowers and plants have been sent to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum for preservation. An envelope containing a loose note written to "Mrs. Seymour" may be found in the back of the folder.
For original see box 3, fd. 2.
(composed mostly of incoming letters)
Also contains Baude's calling card, a Goddard and Fraser business card, and a receipt for art supplies.
Includes handwritten and typed drafts, a final typewritten draft, and a rejection notice from R.U. Johnson of The Century Magazine, 1893.
The first letter in this folder, which may be found in a smaller archival folder, was probably from Lillie Hamilton French to one of Anna's daughters about their mother, Anna Baker Weir. The remaining letters include typed copies of courtship letters from J.A.W. dated 1882 and other handwritten personal notes from family members dated 1883-1891.
Some undated. Many of the letters here concern the death of J.A.W.
Many of the letters here concern the death of J.A.W.
These letters concern primarily the settlement of the estate of J. Alden Weir, the sale of some of his paintings, honors that came to him after his death, and a 1925 memorial exhibition of his work.
The master negative is not for patron use. For duplication purposes only. Copy for interlibrary loan is located with the collection.
Please note that the fiche of the Louisa Weir Seymour Journals are grouped together after the fiche for box 5 even though the originals are filed in box 2.
Inventory of Photographs in the Julian Alden Weir Collection, P-78