Joseph Thurman Pearson Jr.

On the Valley (1916), University Club, Philadelphia

The Twins: Virginia and Jane (1917), Michener Art Museum

He was one of the eight children of box manufacturer Joseph T. Pearson, Sr. and Annie Virginia Wells, and grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.[1] He attended public schools,[2] and worked in the office of architect Wilson Eyre, 1894–1896.[3]

Pearson attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on scholarship, 1896–1901, where he studied under William Merritt Chase and Julian Weir.[1] He was awarded a 1901 Cresson Traveling Scholarship by PAFA, which enabled him to visit France, Germany and Spain.[4] He studied privately with Weir following his return, and was hired by PAFA as an instructor in drawing.[4] He taught at PAFA for a total of twenty-five years: 1909–1922, and 1924–1937.[5] He also taught at PAFA's summer school in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.[6]

He attained early notoriety as a landscape painter for works influenced by Japanese art, and often featuring birds and animals.[7] Among these was On the Valley, exhibited at PAFA in 1916:

Joseph T. Pearson, Jr., has had his great moment this year; he reached a high note of achievement that does not often occur in the thorn-pricked paths of an artistic career. His "On the Valley" not only won the Edward T. Stotesbury prize for a painting never before exhibited—a prize which is awarded by the Directors—but he was also given the unanimous vote for the Temple gold medal by the painters' jury. The composition is distinctly decorative in treatment and very original in conception, with bare, sweeping hillsides, veiled in mist, in the distance, beneath which the still valley opens out before us. The arrangement of two geese and a haunting old tree-stump in the foreground realizes a special quality belonging to Mr. Pearson's art, and in the middle distance is suggestively shown a green bank and trees and a boat, broadly painted, flat in tone, remiscent perhaps of Puvis de Chavannes. There is much poetry and beauty in this picture and the artist has succeeded in making others feel as he felt, transversing the banks of the Schuylkill, the beautiful serenity of what lay before him not alone in the actual scene, but heightened by an impassioned imagination.[8]

Pearson painted a trio of full-length portraits of his wife Emily, including Study in Gray (1905).[4] He painted a full-length portrait of his eldest daughter Ruth as a child,[9] and at least two double portraits of his twin daughters, Virginia and Jane.[4] The 1917 double portrait depicted the girls in identical pink dresses, flanking a sewing table and standing before a deep blue mural. The Twins: Virginia and Jane received multiple awards, and has become Pearson's most famous work.[10]

Pearson volunteered his skills during World War I, camouflaging ships at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.[5] He was powerfully affected by the war, and turned to religious painting late in his career.[4]

Several PAFA instructors were invited to paint murals for the Pennsylvania Building at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.[11] Agriculture was the theme assigned to Pearson, whose lunette-shaped mural, Harvesting, was installed inside the building's north wing.[lower-alpha 1] It was the same size—10.75 ft (3.28 m) in height and 21.5 ft (6.6 m) in length—as Daniel Garber's lunette mural, A Wooded Watershed, installed opposite it.[11]

A Group of Geese (1910), unlocated

Landscape (1911), unlocated

Pearson exhibited regularly at PAFA from 1904 to 1917, and sporadically thereafter.[13] A Group of Geese was awarded PAFA's 1910 Fellowship Prize;[2] Landscape was awarded its 1911 Jennie Sesnan Medal;[14]^: 375[lower-alpha 2] On the Valley was awarded its 1916 Temple Gold Medal along with its $1,000 Edward T. Stotesbury Prize; and The Twins: Virginia and Jane was awarded its 1917 Beck Gold Medal.[13]^: 364

He exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design from 1907 to 1918.[16] A Group of Geese was awarded NAD's 1911 2nd Hallgarten Prize; Landscape was awarded its 1915 George Inness Gold Medal; and Spring was awarded its 1918 Saltus Medal for Merit.[16]

The Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh awarded him a 1911 Honorable Mention (4th place) for Ducks in a Marsh.[17] The Art Institute of Chicago awarded him its 1915 Norman Wait Harris Silver Medal (and $500 prize) for In the Gloaming;[18] and its 1918 Potter Palmer Award (and $1,000 prize) for The Twins: Virginia and Jane. The Philadelphia Water Color Club awarded him its 1933 Joseph Pennell Medal.[2]

Pearson's October was awarded a bronze medal at the 1910 Exposición Internacional del Centenario in Buenos Aires; Ducks in a Marsh and Fox and Geese were awarded a gold medal at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco;[19] and The Twins: Virginia and Jane was awarded a gold medal at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.[1]

The St. Botolph Club of Boston hosted an April 1912 joint exhibition of paintings by Pearson and animalier sculptures by Albert Laessle.[20] The Woodmere Art Museum, in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, reunited the pair 31 years later, for a 1943 joint exhibition.[21] Milch Galleries in New York City hosted a 1921 group exhibition of paintings by Daniel Garber, William Langson Lathrop, Robert Spencer and Pearson.[22] The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hosted a one-man exhibition of Pearson's drawings in 1937.[23]

Pearson was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1913, and an Academician in 1919.[24]

Silas Yerkes Manor House (1790s)

Silas Yerkes Barn (1797) became Pearson's studio

On October 7, 1902, Pearson married Emily Fetter, also from Germantown. The couple moved into the house where he had grown up, which they occupied until the end of World War I.[5] They had seven children together: Ruth, Joseph III, Emilie, Julian, twins Virginia and Jane, and Justin.

In 1918, Pearson purchased the Silas Yerkes property along the Pennypack Creek, in Huntingdon Valley, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.[4] He restored its 1790s manor house, and converted its 1797 stone barn into a studio.[lower-alpha 3] "After his move to Huntingdon Valley, in 1918, Pearson reduced his artistic output, probably spending more of his time restoring and renovating the stone buildings and landscaping the property to his liking."[5]^: 190

Emily Fetter Pearson died suddenly in 1947.[5]^: 300 Pearson married family friend and fellow artist Alice Kent Stoddard, in Thomaston, Maine, on May 28, 1948.[2] Stoddard painted multiple portraits of Pearson,[5]^: 190 who died less than three years later.

Joseph Thurman Pearson Jr. was buried beside his first wife in Ivy Hill Cemetery,[26] in the Cedarbrook section of Philadelphia.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts hosted a memorial exhibition of Pearson's work in early 1952.[27]

Among Pearson's PAFA students were Ross Eugene Braught,[28]^: 424 William James Dow,[28]^: 952 Edith Emerson,[29] Anne Goodell Lathrop,[5]^: 291 Arthur Meltzer,[30] and Cesare A. Ricciardi.[31]

At the invitation of one of Pearson's grandchildren, art dealer Roy Wood, Jr. visited the studio in 1996, 45 years after the artist's death.[4] Wood catalogued the paintings and drawings he found there, most of which had never been exhibited. A number of these rediscovered works were featured in the Woodmere Art Museum's 2001 retrospective exhibition: Joseph Thurman Pearson, Jr.: A Painter in the Grand Manner.[4]