Lemuel Wilmarth was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts on 11 November 1835 and died in Brooklyn on 27 July 1918. Thus his life spanned the publication of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville to the death of Guillaume Apollinaire and the last battles of World War I. Before studying painting, Wilmarth was a watchmaker. Known as the leader of rebels who left the National Academy of Design to found the more liberal Art Students League, Wilmarth started out in the most conventional of settings, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1857-59) then at the Munich Academy under Wilhelm von Kaulbach between 1859 and 1862. From Munich, Wilmarth went to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was the first Americ...