James Augustus Suydam (1819 - 1865)
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Although James Augustus Suydam was both an architect and lawyer, his career as an artist is what he is most noted for. Suydam is widely known as an American landscape painter, considered a premier Luminism painter, who is one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. After graduating from New York University, Suydam began his career as a businessman but spent the majority of his energy on painting and studying under Minor C. Kellogg. His studio was located at the noted 10th Street Studio Building in New York City. At the age of thirty, Suydam was elected to the Century Association and, in 1859, was elected an honorary professional member of the prestigious National Academy of Design. Being deeply spiritual, Suydam used his familiarity with science to reduce nature to calm and clean forms that looked proportionally distorted in order for God's creations to look superior over the work of man. Most of his famous works, such as Paradise Rocks (1865), is held at the National Academy as well as Taft Museum.