Henry Golden Dearth

A native of Bristol, RI, Dearth received his early training from a local portrait painter before going to Paris where he studied with Aimee Morot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for four years. In the late 1880s he returned to America but didn't remain permanently. Dearth established a routine dividing his time among Montreuil-sur-Mer, Normandy and New York. He transformed the sketches of the previous summer into paintings each winter in New York. Dearth's early paintings were quiet, often romantic and melancholy landscapes. However, around 1900 Dearth's style began to change. He had become intrigued with oriental objects and introduced them into his paintings. Dearth cast aside his formerly dull palette to paint in increasingly bright, pure, and broken colors. A collector of Oriental textiles and Persian manuscript illuminations, Dearth used similar patterns in his compositions. Although he was known as a diligent worker, scarcely two hundred of his paintings still exist since he destroyed canvases which did not satisfy him.