Albert Insley (1842-1937)

Landscape artist Albert Insley, associated with the American barbizon painters, enjoyed an active career depicting inland and marine subjects around the New England and Middle Atlantic states, from the early 1850’s to 1935.  He was raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of a photographer.  He received his first painting commission at age 12, and worked for his father as an apprentice photographer during his teens.

During the early 1860s, Insley continued his artistic development, first as an art instructor with Henry Hillyer at New York University, then, from 1864 to 1865, as a student of Jasper Francis Cropsey.  The artist painted some historically interesting views of New York Harbor, Bayonne, New Jersey and Staten Island, and began to exhibit his work regularly at the National Academy of Design beginning in 1862.  Insley exhibited annually at the Academy from 1862 to 1898, and at the Brooklyn Art Association from 1869 to 1891.  From 1873 to 1918, he maintained a residence and studio at the prestigious Tenth street Studio Building in New York City, making regular painting trips to Rockland County, New Jersey, the Hudson River Valley, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut and Long Island.

After 1881, Insley’s paintings became more expressive under the tutelage of George Inness, and more poetic under the influence of the French Barbizon painters.  From 1905 to 1915, the artist painted many memorable impressionistic works.  Insley used a bright palette of colors from the early 1920s to his death in 1937.  Insley died after 83 years of painting, at age 95, in Nyack, New York.

Memberships:

Boston Arts Club

Brooklyn Art Association

Nanuet Painters and Sculptors Guild

National Academy of Design

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Salmagundi Club

Public Collections:

Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.

Cragsmoor Free Library, New York

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Harding Museum, Chicago

Jersey City Museum, New Jersey

Preservation Society, Newport, RI

Rockland County Historical Society, New York