Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889)
Born in New York City in 1803, Robert Walter Weir studied under John Wesley Jarvis and the English artist Robert Cox. In 1824 he traveled to Italy and studied in Florence for three years. Upon his return to the United States, Weir set up a studio in New York and executed portraiture, genre paintings and Hudson River landscapes. In 1829 he was elected an Academician at the National Academy.
Weir is most known for his appointment in 1834 as instructor of drawing and professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, succeeding Charles Leslie, where he taught for over forty years. He instructed James Abbott McNeill Whistler and his own artist-sons, John F. Weir and Julian Alden Weir. Weir also instructed Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, Phillip Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman and Confederates Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.