Allston, Washington

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Allston, Washington (1779–1843) US Romantic painter. A pupil of Benjamin West at London's Royal Academy, Allston was the pioneer of romantic landscape painting in the US and a precursor of the Hudson River School. His work in England includes a portrait of Coleridge (1814). In 1818 he returned to the USA. Allston's most famous work is the lyrical Moonlit Landscape (1819). He spent 20 years working on the disappointing Belshazzar's Feast and it remained unfinished.

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