(1827-1887)
Joseph Rusling Meeker is nationally the best-known artist whose art transcends the regional subjects he portrays. This is probably because his style is identified with the Hudson River School. He was a master at depicting the southern Louisiana swamps and lowlands, imbuing the topography with the exoticism typical of the Romantic Movement. Meeker was trained in New York at the National Academy of Design and began his career as a portrait painter. During the Civil War he served on a Union gunboat that patrolled the waterways of Louisiana. Returning to St. Louis, he immortalized the Land of Evangeline on canvas, in a luminous, atmospheric style that captures the beauty and timelessness of the bayou.
