Concord Grapes

A pupil of the celebrated Western artist Alfred Jacob Miller, Andrew John Henry Way was born in Washington, D.C. in 1826 and eventually settled in Baltimore after additional study in Paris and Florence from 1850-54. Way began his career as a portrait painter; however, after one of his still lifes attracted praise from the famed German-American painter Emmanuel Leutze circa 1859, he fully committed himself to the category. Known for his careful, even scientific, observation of his subjects, Way enjoyed a prosperous career bolstered by exhibitions in London and throughout the United States—where he won the “Excellence in Still Life” Medal at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. Way’s work is in the collections of in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. as well as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C..