Washington Allston

Washington Allston (1779–1843) was an American painter and poet who pioneered the Romantic movement in U.S. landscape painting. Born on a rice plantation in South Carolina, he graduated from Harvard in 1800 and later studied at the Royal Academy in London. His early works were grand and spectacular, while his later pieces became more subjective. Allston traveled extensively, visiting Paris and Italy, where he befriended notable figures like Washington Irving and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He married Ann Channing in 1809 and, after her death, Martha Remington Dana in 1830.

Allston was also a writer, publishing poetry and the novel *Monaldi* in 1841. His artistic career included exhibitions at the Boston Athenaeum and the National Academy of Design in New York. Some of his works were published in gift books like *The Token*. He worked on a masterpiece, *Belshazzar’s Feast*, but left it unfinished at his death in 1843.

Known as the "American Titian" for his bold use of color, Allston influenced notable figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The neighborhood of Allston in Boston and Allston Way in Berkeley are named after him. He also coined the term "Objective Correlative," later popularized by T.S. Eliot. His legacy endures as a significant figure in American Romantic art.