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John Ross Key

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Artist's Biography

John Ross Key was born July 16, 1837, two months after the death of his father.  He was brought up in Georgetown, District of Columbia, until age five by his grandfather, Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star Spangled Banner."  As a teen-ager John Key was forced to go to work to support his widowed mother.  His early talent for drawing led logically to a job as topographical artist and draftsman with the U.S. Coast Survey.  In 1859 Key was hired as mapmaker in the advance party of the Lander Expedition whose mission was to chart the best overland trail for large wagon trains through the hostile Indian territories of Wyoming and Nevada.  In 1861 along with several other grandsons of Francis Scott Key, Key chose the Confederacy and became a lieutenant in the Confederate Engineers, serving as a mapmaker in Charleston, S.C. and Richmond.  His panoramic view of the bombardment of Fort Sumter enjoyed a glamorous exhibition history in the 20th century through its false attribution to Albert Bierstadt. After the Civil War, Key launched into a career as a landscape painter, dividing his time between Baltimore and New York City.  During the summers of 1867 and 1868, he rusticated at Oakland, on the far western end of the Maryland panhandle, accompanied by his mother, Virginia Ringgold Key. Oakland had become the summer resort to which various branches of the Key and Ringgold families would go to escape the summer heat of Baltimore. In 1869 Key came west and painted some of the loveliest views of early California in a Hudson River School style.  Key spent 1873-1874 in Germany, France and England where he was exposed to the influence of Constable and the French Barbizon painters.