Ernest Ludvig Ipsen

Ernest L. Ipsen (1869-1951) was an American painter specializing in portraiture. He painted hundreds of portraits commissioned by institutions of government, education, religion, and commerce who wanted to commemorate their associates. His subjects include architect Cass Gilbert, General Robert E. Lee, statesman Elihu Root, publisher George Arthur Plimpton, actor Otis Skinner, politician Edith Nourse Rogers, and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. His portrait of Maurice Francis Egan, Minister to Denmark under three U.S. presidents, was presented to the King and Queen of Denmark. He also painted landscapes and seascapes, particularly along the New England coast.

Early life and education

Ipsen was born September 5, 1869, in Malden, Massachusetts to Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen (1840–1920) and Emma Petrea Ipsen (Template:Nee, 1846–1914).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His father, an architect and designer, and his mother, a singer, were both natives of Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1884 to 1887, under the tutelage of portrait painter Frederic Porter Vinton, who may have influenced his choice to pursue portraiture. He continued his training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (where his father had studied architecture) from 1887 to 1891. His instructors there included Carl Bloch.<ref name="Lowrey">Lowrey, Carol, Ernest L. Ipsen, A Legacy of Art: Paintings and Sculpture by Artist Life Members of the National Art Club (New York: National Arts Club, 2007), pp.132-133. Template:ISBN</ref> He won a prize for figure studies and a scholarship in life painting.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Career

Following his study in Copenhagen, Ipsen returned to Massachusetts, establishing a studio in Boston's Harcourt Studio building, where he remained from 1900 to 1904.<ref name="Lowrey"/> Ipsen eventually moved to New York, where he established a studio on 19th Street.<ref name="Fielding">Fielding, Mantle, "Ipsen, Ernest L.," Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (New York: James F. Carr, 1965).</ref> Ipsen would continue to work out of the National Arts Club Studio on 19th Street until 1934, when he moved to South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

His work was widely praised for its "sincere, honest statements of personality"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and he "would be the choice for a serious, carefully considered portrait without dash or technical bravura of any sort, whose very seriousness brings with it both charm of style and surface."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref group="note">This may be a subtle dig at Ipsen's contemporary, John Singer Sargent, whose work many considered rather flamboyant.</ref>

Personal life

On June 15, 1908, Ipsen married Edith Boyden Crocker of Brookline, Massachusetts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> They had one daughter, Edith Valborg Ipsen, who was born on April 11, 1909, and died three days later.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> At the time they were living in Boston's Fenway Studios where Ipsen had moved after the Harcourt Studios building burned down in 1904, destroying not only his home but also paintings stored there. The Ipsens spent winters in Boston and later, New York, and summers at a home they bought in Nonquitt, a section of South Dartmouth on the Massachusetts coast.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After an automobile accident in 1938 which seriously impaired Mrs. Ipsen's health,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> they sold the Nonquitt property and moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, although they still returned north, to New Brunswick, Canada, in the summer.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Edith Ipsen died on January 20, 1948.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Ernest Ipsen continued to paint his friends and neighbors, lecture and exhibit locally in Florida until his death in 1951.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> They are interred at the Walnut Hills Cemetery in Brookline.

Gallery

• Pierre Félix Masseau, 1891
  Pierre Félix Masseau, 1891
• Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1898
  Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1898
• South Dartmouth landscape, 1907
  South Dartmouth landscape, 1907
• Edith Nourse Rogers, 1909
  Edith Nourse Rogers, 1909
• Lucy Carnegie Ferguson, c.1920
  Lucy Carnegie Ferguson, c.1920
• Robert H. Nisbet, 1920
  Robert H. Nisbet, 1920
• William G. Watt, 1923
  William G. Watt, 1923
• Cass Gilbert, 1927
  Cass Gilbert, 1927
• Robert E. Lee, 1931
  Robert E. Lee, 1931
• The Artists Guide, Maine, 1935
  The Artists Guide, Maine, 1935
• Milton H. Bird with his champion Irish Terrier Kelvin Colleen, 1943
  Milton H. Bird with his champion Irish Terrier Kelvin Colleen, 1943

External links

• Short biography on AskART.com
• Name Authority at Union Lists of Artist Names Online (Getty)
• Exhibition of portraits, an exhibition catalog available from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries.
• List of works maintained by the Smithsonian https://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=ernest+ipsen