Joseph Rodefer De Camp
(1858-1923)

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Joseph Rodefer De Camp was an American painter who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio but spent much of his career in Boston. When De Camp was only seventeen he initiated his art studies in Munich, Germany. In Munich, De Camp studied under the American painter, Frank Duveneck who led a group of artists known as the “Duveneck Boys”.

De Camp was greatly influenced by the teaching of Duveneck, as well as the Dutch Masters whose work he saw while he was in Europe. De Camp was especially drawn to the work of Jan Vermeer.

De Camp was known for his figurative paintings of women in interiors, portraits and landscapes. De Camp’s style referenced both Realism and Impressionism but leaned toward the latter as he matured as an artist.

In 1880 De Camp returned to the United States and secured a job teaching art and painting portraits in Boston. De Camp entered the local art scene in Boston and joined the Boston School of Painting. The Boston school, led by Edmund Charles Tarbell and Emil Otto Grundmann was known for its atmospheric and emotional style known as Tonalism. In 1897 De Camp helped to found a group called the Ten American Painters, who primarily painted in an Impressionist style. De Camp continued to paint portraits throughout his career, including a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt as well as several other well-known people of the time.

Unfortunately in 1904, many of De Camp’s paintings were lost in a fire that destroyed his Boston Studio in the Harcourt Building. While most of his early paintings and landscapes were destroyed, many of his portraits belong to major museums. His paintings are currently in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cincinnati Art Museum, Colby College Museum in Maine, the Harvard University Art Museum and the Terra Foundation of American Art in Chicago. De Camp’s paintings are an asset to any fine art collection.

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