William Verplanck Birney (1850-1919) ~ A Pause in the Music, 1892 ✿

William Verplanck Birney ~ A Pause in the Music, 1892. Oil on canvas.

Cincinnati-born genre painter William Verplanck Birney (1850-1919) studied at both the Massachusetts Normal Art School and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (under Eakins), then he went to the Munich Academy where he may have met colleague Louis Charles Moeller (1855-1930).

Birney was one of two Americans whose works sold at Munich’s 1883 International Exhibition. He established a studio in New York City and exhibited at the National Academy of Design between 1885 and 1909.