Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), Portrait of a Boy, c. 1882, oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 18 1/8 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, gift of Edna Brassner.
A native of Kentucky, Frank Duveneck was born on this day in 1848. Duveneck was one of many Americans who studied art in Munich rather than Paris to avoid the rigid structure of French academies. This image of a young boy in seventeenth-century costume is typical of his many rapidly painted portrait studies composed during a second trip to Germany. The artist's energetic style is apparent in the vigorous brushwork and dark tones, gleaned from his German teachers and from seventeenth-century Dutch painting.