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Dennis Miller Bunker (November 6, 1861 – December 28, 1890) was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures. One of the major American painters of the late 19th century,a friend of many prominent artists of the era, Bunker died from meningitis at the age of 29.... (Wiki)
Student of:Jean-Leon Gerome (Jean Leon Gerome) (1824-1904), William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)
Teacher of:William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941)
Jessica, 1890
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Bunker was born in New York City to Matthew Bunker, the secretary-treasurer of the Union Ferry Company, and his wife, Mary Anne Eytinge Bunker. In 1876 he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York and the National Academy of Design. By 1880 he was participating in the annual exhibitions of the National Academy, the American Watercolor Society, and the Brooklyn Art Association.
In 1881 Bunker exhibited a watercolor at the Boston Art Club. He subsequently exhibited both oil paintings and watercolors at the Club in 1882 and 1883. In 1886, the American printmaker Louis Prang exhibited two of Bunker's works from his own collection at the Club.
In 1882 Bunker left New York to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, most notably with Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the spring of 1883, accompanied by fellow students Charles A. Platt and Kenneth R. Cranford, Bunker left Paris to travel through the French countryside and the coast of Normandy, returning to continue his studies in mid-October. The following year the three artists summered and painted in Brittany. By year's end Bunker had returned to New York City.
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Eleanor Hardy Bunker
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Portrait Sketch Of Eleanor Hardy Bunker,1890
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...During the spring of 1889 Bunker resigned from the Cowles Art School. At a reception he met Eleanor Hardy, whom he would marry the following year. In the summer Bunker stayed at a boarding house in Medfield, Massachusetts, and enjoyed his most productive season of painting. In the fall he returned to New York, writing daily to Hardy in Boston. By this time, Bunker's circle of friends included not only Sargent, Gardner, and Platt, but Thomas Wilmer Dewing, William Merritt Chase, Stanford White, William Dean Howells, Charles Martin Loeffler, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, as well.
In 1890 Bunker first exhibited his impressionist landscapes at the St. Botolph Club in Boston. He received an offer to teach at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and planned to take over William Merritt Chase's class in Brooklyn that winter. In June he visited the art colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, and in July returned to paint further at Medfield. On October 2 Bunker married Eleanor Hardy in Boston. The Cornish Colony Artist, Henry Oliver Walker, was Best Man at Bunker's wedding. Bunker had been Walker's Best Man at Walker's wedding the previous year. The couple then moved to New York. Returning to Boston to celebrate Christmas with the Hardy family, Bunker fell ill. On December 28 he died of heart failure, probably caused by cerebro-spinal meningitis. Platt and other friends organized a memorial exhibition at the St. Botolph Club, held in 1891.
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Portrait George Augustus Gardner,1888
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Portrait of a Woman
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Second portrait of a Woman
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Bunker's last figure pieces remained faithful to his academic training. Jessica, 1890 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), The Mirror, 1890 (Terra Foundation for American Art), and Eleanor Hardy Bunker, 1890 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) are characterized by a restricted color range and heightened elegance.
The Mirror
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Portrait of Anne Page
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Although highly regarded during his lifetime, the 20th century assessment of American Impressionism was largely negative, and Bunker's work was all but forgotten soon after his death. His teachings influenced a number of painters (upon his resignation from the Cowles school, his students wrote a letter of appreciation, urging him to reconsider), among whom were William McGregor Paxton and Lilla Cabot Perry. It was a student of Paxton's named R. H. Ives Gammell who did the most to maintain Bunker's reputation, organizing two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the 1940s, and publishing a biography in 1953. The current revival of interest in his work is the result of a less programmatic reassessment of 19th century art:
"Thus, depending upon the viewpoint of the writer, Bunker can be seen as either a traditionalist or an innovator. In truth, he was both"
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