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HILADELPHIA, MONDAY, June 17, 1912
THOS. P. ANSHUTZ DIES; FAMED ART EDUCATOR

Senior Instructor at Academy of the Fine Arts Succumbs to Long Illness

SKETCH CLUB PRESIDENT

Distinguished as Artist at Home and Abroad and Won Many Prizes

Thomas P. Anshutz, one of the foremost of America's art educators, died yesterday morning at 11.05 at his home at Fort Washington, Pa., from a complication of diseases, which had lasted over a space of about eighteen months. Mr. Anshutz, who was 60 years old, was at the head of the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Last fall Mr. Anshutz, after a trip in search of health, resumed his work at the academy for a short time and was then compelled to give it up. He was in the Hahnemann Hospital until Christmas, when he was removed to his country home, where he died. Following his return from Europe, he had seemed to be in better health.

Mr. Anshutz is survived by his widow and a son, Edward, who is now in a hospital, having suffered an accident about four weeks ago.

Funeral services will be held Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock at his home, and interment will be made at Hillside Cemetery. The pallbearers will be Dr. George Woodward, Henry J. Thouron, Charles Grafly, Fredrick L. Pitts, Hugh H. Breckenridge, Morris Hall Pancoast, J. E. D. Trask, F. Cresson Schell, Edward W. Redfield, C. Few Seiss, John J. McCarthy, Helen Henderson, John J. Dull, John Sloan, John Frederick Lewis, Charles H. Stephens, Alexander Bower, Robert Henri and Charles T. Dana.

Living in comparative obscurity in this city, Mr. Anshutz  was declared by many of the ablest artists of the world to be America's strongest art influence. 

His death removes one whose place, in the literal sense of the term, cannot be taken. He was to the present generation of art what William Morris Hunt was to his. His death, too, will be severely felt by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, of which he was the senior instructor, and with which his name has been inseparably linked since 1881, for he was of the type of men who loom above their institutions and lend distinction to them.

He was the great exponent of personal expression, of leading a pupil along the lines of least resistance to a full development of his own individual powers; and for their ability, wealth and fame some of the greatest American painters have to thank Mr. Anshutz and this policy of instruction, which has been the distinctive feature of the Academy curriculum since first he entered as a teacher.

Many artists today broadly declare that Mr. Anshutz in his life had no peers - that he was supreme among teachers. Others say he was America's greatest instructor; but all give to him the credit of being the strongest guiding influence American art has known since first he took to bringing out neophytes what they would not being out themselves.

Liberal in His Views

A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy and today one of Philadelphia's best-known artists said recently of him: 

"Mr. Anshutz was always one of the strongest influences working toward what the professional artists recognizes as the essential excellence of the Pennsylvania academy schools - its liberality of view and its freedom from the academic, the word used in the opprobrious sense. In fact, the openmindedness in matters of art or its technique of the Academy faculty that has raised it above most, if not all, of the art schools of the country. 

"The important part played by Mr. Anshutz in this policy is freely acknowledged by many of America's younger painters, who have publicly acclaimed his sympathetic understanding and help in the earlier years, when they were trying to find themselves instead of copying a master."

Men like George Luks and Robert  

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NOTED ARTIST CLAIMED BY DEATH
Thomas P. Anshutz was for many years identified with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and was famed as an art instructor. He died yesterday morning at his home in Forst Washington from a complication of diseases, from which he suffered for about a year and a half.

Henri, both students of Mr. Anshutz at the Academy, are among those who hav acclaimed his supremacy as an instructor.

But the teacher would never talk of his part in the fame of his pupils. "They have been merely in my classes. I have learned more from them than they have from me," was the invariable reply of one who was not only innately modest, but who possessed that fine quality essential to a man of deep knowledge - that of being always a student and having an open mind, keenly and continually receptive to new methods and new ideas.

It was the confirmed belief of Mr. Anshutz that no two students, provided they are not copyists, ought to paint the same thing in the same way. Just as an author who slavishly follows in the footsteps of other authors is likely to produce that which is artificial or hackneyed, so is a painter likely to fail unless "he aims for a simple direct expression of his interest in things."

Studied in Paris

Mr. Anshutz was born in Newport, Ky., October 5, 1851. He first studied art in the National Academy, in New York, when it was located at Twenty-third street and Fourth avenue, under the direction of Wilmarth. Here he stayed two years. He came to Philadelphia then and attended the Pennsylvania Academy schools, studying under Thomas Eakins. For a year he studied under Julian, in Paris, as well as under Doucet, Ferrier and Bougereau. Of Doucet, Mr. Anshutz always spoke in the most reverent terms, declaring him to be an ideal instructor and a great artist.

In 1881 he became an instructor in the Pennsylvania Academy schools. he won honorable mention in the Philadelphia Art Club exhibition of 1901, and in 1904 took the silver medal at the St. Louis Exposition. He was awarded the Walter Lippincott prize in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibition of 1909, and in the same year and same exhibition won the gold medal of honor. His work took the gold medal at the Buenos Airos Exposition of 1910.

He was a member of the Philadelphia Water Color Club, first vice president of the Academy Fellowship, president of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, an associate of the National Academy of Design and member of the Union Internationale des Beaux Arts et des Belles Lettres.