author

Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

Best known for a classic guide to oil painting, this American artist and teacher wrote with the practical, workshop-minded clarity of someone who had spent years studying both technique and craft. His books still appeal to painters who want solid fundamentals instead of vague advice.

1 Audiobook

The Painter in Oil

The Painter in Oil

by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

About the author

Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst was an American painter, teacher, and writer born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on December 26, 1859. Sources describe him as an artist-instructor associated with portrait and landscape painting, and his own book The Painter in Oil presents him as a pupil of William Sartain, Bouguereau, Tony-Fleury, and Aimé Morot.

Parkhurst was also a member of the New York Water Color Club, and The Painter in Oil identifies him as a former lecturer on art at Dickinson College. That book, first published in 1898, became his best-known work and helped preserve late-19th-century studio teaching in a clear, highly practical form for students of oil painting.

Because easily confirmed biographical details are limited in the sources I found, it is safest to remember him chiefly as a working artist-teacher whose writing outlasted his era. Readers still come to Parkhurst for straightforward instruction on materials, color, and method, especially in traditional oil painting.