Woodland Idyll

John F. Carlson was a renowned landscape painter of the early 20th century. Born in Sweden in 1874, his family immigrated to the United States 10 years later, settling in Buffalo, NY.

In 1902, he began attending the Art Student League, where he learned from artists Birge Harrison and Frank Vincent DuMond. The following year, he followed Harrison to Byrdcliffe, a newly-founded arts and crafts community in Woodstock, NY.

Attracted by the unique scenery of the Catskill Mountains, Carlson eventually settled outside of Woodstock, painting lyrical images of forestry and forming a long-term relationship with the town’s artist colony. He would go on to teach at the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting, where he imparted his aesthetic ideologies on many students.

As an impressionist, Carlson emphasized light and atmospheric conditions yet he did not employ brilliant colors and instead opted for a more tonal palette, a nod to his years with Harrison.

Carlson became an Artist Life Member of The National Arts Club in 1922. In addition to the Club, his works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Sheldon Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Springville Museum of Art in Utah, among others.