J. Laurie Wallace

Who was J. Laurie Wallace?

John Laurie Wallace was an Irish-born American painter.

Wallace was born in Garvagh, Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when he was age 4.

He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He posed for several of Eakins's paintings, including The Crucifixion, Arcadia and The Swimming Hole, and for dozens of photographs. In 1881 he became Eakins's assistant.

In 1891, he moved to Omaha, Nebraska to take the position of Director of the Western Art Association. That organization soon failed, but Wallace remained in Omaha, becoming a commissioned portrait painter and professor. One of the portraits Wallace is known to have completed was of George W. Lininger, the owner of an extensive art collection and a private art gallery in Omaha that he routinely opened to the public at no charge. The portrait of Lininger hung in Lininger's art gallery until it was closed and the contents sold in the late 1920s.

He died in Omaha, Nebraska in 1953, at the age of 89, and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Omaha.