author
Edward Simmons
1852–1931
Best known for grand murals as well as luminous figure and marine paintings, this American Impressionist helped shape the look of public art in the United States. He also belonged to The Ten, the influential group of painters who broke away to exhibit independently.
1 Audiobook
From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee
by Edward Simmons
About the author
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1852, Edward Emerson Simmons grew up in an old New England family and later graduated from Harvard in 1874. He studied art in Boston and then in Paris before building a career that ranged from easel painting to stained glass and large decorative commissions.
Simmons became especially well known for mural work, and many readers may know his name through the American Renaissance movement and the public buildings it transformed. Alongside those ambitious projects, he painted impressionist landscapes, marine scenes, and graceful figure subjects with a lighter, more intimate mood.
He was also a founding member of The Ten American Painters, a group that left the Society of American Artists to exhibit on its own terms. Simmons died in 1931, but his work still offers a vivid look at an era when American painting was becoming bolder, more confident, and more distinctly its own.