Description:

J. LEBRUN JENKINS (AMERICAN, 1878-1951)
Oil on canvas, notated and addressed to verso. Autumnal river landscape under open sky, painted wooden frame.

About the Artist: American landscape and seascape painter, J. LeBrun Jenkins, was born in New York City on October 5, 1876. After his early education there he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he resided for the rest of his life in a house with a studio located at 351 S. Maple Avenue in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis. At the age of eighteen years old, Jenkins was first employed as a commercial artist at the St. Louis Chronicle in 1894. He moved on to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1897. Later he worked for a number of art-related area companies in St. Louis including the Gray Engraving Company, the Barnes-Crosby Advertising Company and the Gardiner Advertising firm from 1900 to 1909, when he decided to devote more time to his fine art painting and printmaking.

Area records in St. Louis also reveal that Jenkins worked as a part-time freelance artist for the D’Arcy Advertising Company and the Western Advertising firm through 1921. During this period Jenkins studied painting, color theory and drawing with his step-father, Francis Regnault, a descendant of a long line of French painters. On his mother’s side of the family, Jenkins was a descendant of the famous eighteenth century woman society portraitist, Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, for whom Jenkins was named. Maintaining a family tradition, Jenkins and his wife Lily named their only daughter Vigee.

J. LeBrun Jenkins enjoyed a successful career as a painter and illustrator until his sudden death on March 22, 1951, while painting in his studio. His work is included in a number of American collections including a large body of work at the Missouri Historical Society.

He was a regular exhibitor at the McCaughen and Burr Galleries who memorialized the painter with a posthumous retrospective that opened on February 27, 1955. Both the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch included laudatory reviews of this exhibition on February 20, and February 27, 1955. A large and colorful oil on canvas panoramic landscape included in the 1955 exhibition was recently purchased in January of 2018, and intended for the permanent collection at Stetson University’s Hand Art Center in DeLand, Florida where it will join Stetson University’s important landscape collection. This canvas demonstrates Jenkin’s elegant handling of atmosphere and its ability to transform colorful elements in the landscape. It is representative of his finest landscape painting.

In 1901, J. Lebrun Jenkins was granted a copyright for his award-winning “Emblem for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition” in St. Louis. In this work Jenkins developed an unusual method of creating a high relief, three-dimensional effect on a flat surface. This innovation reappeared late in the artist’s career and was incorporated in a number of paintings included in his retrospective in 1955.

J. LeBrun Jenkins died on March 22, 1951. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. Jenkins is listed in The Artists Bluebook.

Written by Gary R. Libby, author, curator and art historian
25.75" height, 30" width

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December 11, 2021 10:00 AM CST
St. Louis, MO, US

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