Edward Willis Redfield

Who was Edward Willis Redfield?

Edward Willis Redfield was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of the New Hope area, often depicting the snow-covered countryside.

Redfield was born in 1869 in Bridgeville, Delaware. He showed artistic talent at an early age, and from 1887 to 1889 studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. While there he met Robert Henri, who was later to become an important American painter of the Ashcan School, and the two became lifelong friends. Redfield later traveled to France and studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. In Europe, Redfield admired the work of impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Norwegian Fritz Thaulow. In France he met Elise Deligant, the daughter of an innkeeper, and the two married in 1893.

Redfield and his wife returned to America and settled in Centre Bridge, Pennsylvania, near New Hope. Redfield was the first painter to move to the area, and is sometimes considered a co-founder of the artist colony at New Hope along with William Langson Lathrop.