Biografie von Joseph KYLE (1815-1863)

Birth place: Ohio

Death place: NYC

Addresses: NYC, from c.1946

Profession: Panoramist, portrait and figure painter

Studied: Thomas Sully and Bass Otis, Phila.

Exhibited: PAFA; Artists' Fund Soc.; American Art-Union; NAD, 1847-60; also: in 1852, he and Jacob Dallas exhibited a view of Canal Street at the Arcade, New Orleans; he was also a contributer to an 1855 traveling exhibition of a series of paintings illustrating John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress which was shown at Armory Hall, New Orleans, and then in Baton Rouge, La., and Natchez and Vicksburg, Miss.; and in early 1856 he and Dallas showed their panorama "China and Japan Illustrated" at the Academy Hall in NYC

Member: A.N.A., 1849

Comments: In 1848 he advertised for sale his panorama of the Mississippi. During the next decade he collaborated with artists on many panoramas. Among these was another panorama of the Mississippi, for which Kyle and Jacob Dallas (see entry) traveled to New Orleans in 1852 in order to make sketches, and a panorama entitled "China and Japan Illustrated," which Kyle and Dallas based primarily on sketches by William Heine and George R. West (see entries). The Kyle-Dallas 8-foot tall by 400-foot-long panorama, "Pilgrim"s Progress," depicting John Bunyan"s religious allegory in 54 scenes, was rediscovered and exhibited at the Montclair Museum of Art (NJ) in 1999.

Sources: G&W; Smith; Rutledge, PA; Cowdrey, NAD; Thieme-Becker; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; information courtesy J.E. Arrington; repro. in Met. Mus., Life in America; 7 Census (1850), N.Y., LII, 272; N.Y. Daily Tribune, January 31, 1856 (p. 6). More recently, see Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists; and Gerdts in American Artists in Japan, 4.