Biografie von Edward Meyer KERN (1823-1863)

Birth place: Philadelphia

Death place: Phila.

Profession: Landscape & figurative painter in watercolor & oils; survey artist, drawing teacher

Exhibited: Artists Fund Soc., Phila. (1841)

Work: NMAA; BMFA (Karolik collection: includes six Japanese scenes); U.S. Naval Acad. Mus., Annapolis, MD; Naval Records & Lib. Dept. of the Navy; U.S. Navy, Cartographic Records Section, Nat. Archives; Henry E. Huntington Lib. & Art Gal., San Marino, CA

Comments: From 1845-47 he was topographer with FrÈmont's third expedition to the Southwest; during the Mexican War he served under FrÈmont's California command. In the fall and winter of 1848-49 he and his two older brothers, Benjamin and Richard Kern (also survey artists, see entries), were with FrÈmont's fourth expedition to the Colorado Rockies. In 1849 Edward and Richard Kern were topographers with Simpson's expedition into the Navajo country; the resulting report included plates credited to Richard Kern, some of which were after sketches by Edward. From 1853-56 Edward was official artist and photographist" for the Ringgold expedition in the North Pacific. This survey of the coastal regions of East Asia brought Kern to Japan, where he made sketches and watercolors of temple interiors and exteriors, priests, and tea houses. He visited Hawaii in 1856 and painted watercolor landscapes. Kern returned to Japan a second time about 1859 (with the Brooke Expedition), this time visiting Yokohama and Tokyo and again making drawings and watercolors of Japanese life. By spring of 1860 he was back in California. He then served under FrÈmont's command during the first year of the Civil War, but was discharged in November 1861 along with FrÈmont's other appointees.

Sources: G&W; info cited by G&W, courtesy Josephine M. Bever & Henry E. Huntington Lib., San Marino, CA and Office of the Adjutant General, Dept. of the Army; obit., Phila. Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, Nov. 26, 1863; Artists' Fund Society Cat., 1841; Phila. CD 1845-53 (as drawing teacher); FrÈmont, Memoirs, I, 424; Bancroft, History of the Pacific States of North America, California, V, 298-99; Nevins, FrÈmont, Pathmaker of the West, 349, 627; Johnston, Reports of the Secretary of War with Reconnaissances of Routes from San Antonio to El Paso, and Report of J.H. Simpson of an Expedition into the Navajo Country, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Document 64 (1850); Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Conditions & Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part V, 649; Simpson, Report of Explorations across the Great Basin, Appendix Q, 478; Taft, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, 358-59. More recently, see Gerdts, American Artists in Japan, 4 and plate 1; P & H Samuels, 262; Forbes, Encounters with Paradise, 151."