Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,053

This is the grave of William Holbrook Beard.

Born in 1824 in Painesville, Ohio, Beard became a painter. He studied in Europe, but when he came back to the country in the 1860s, he avoided the Civil War (I assume he bought his way out) and became part of the New York art scene. There’s not really that much to know about the man. He’s not an artist people take particularly seriously today. But he was very popular at the time because, as his grave suggests, he was known for his animal paintings. Moreover, his animals were very human and did human things, sometimes satirizing human life through painting pigs or dogs engaging in human activity. So there were many prints made at the time and he made a very good living before dying in 1900, at the age of 75. But he does have one major impact on American life. It was Beard who came up with the “bulls” and “bears” term to describe Wall Street investors. This came from his 1879 painting “The Bulls and Bears in the Market” and was hugely popular at the time. So, uh, interesting enough I guess. Anyway, we can keep this post short and just look at some of Beard’s work:

William Holbrook Beard is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

If you would like this series to visit other 19th century American artists, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Frederick Warren Freer is in Chicago and Ellen Maria Carpenter is in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.