John Ferguson Weir
(b West Point, NY, 28 Aug 1841; d Providence, RI, 8 April 1926). Painter, teacher and sculptor, son of (1) Robert Walter Weir. He grew up at the US Military Academy at West Point, where he was taught by his father. His earliest paintings record the handsome landscape of the surrounding countryside, including View of the Highlands from West Point (1862; New York, NY Hist. Soc.). By November 1862 Weir had settled in New York, occupying quarters in the Studio Building on West Tenth Street, where he became friendly with many of the well-known artists residing there. He also made important contacts through the Century Club and the Athenaeum Club and the Artists' Fund Society. He made his d?but at the National Academy of Design with an Artist's Studio (1864; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.), a detailed view of his father's painting room at West Point. The picture's favourable reception led to his election as an Associate of the National Academy of Design. However, it was the Gun Foundry (1866; Cold Spring, NY, Putnam County Hist. Soc.), set in the West Point Iron and Cannon Foundry, that established Weir as one of the most important 19th-century American painters of industrial themes. The foundry also inspired his Forging the Shaft (1867-8, destr. 1869; replica 1877; New York, Met.). Other themes undertaken by Weir included several variants of Christmas Eve (1864; New York, C. Assoc.).
Part of the Weir family
See the Abbreviations for further details.
