George Henry Boughton
George Henry Boughton
English, 1833 – 1905
George Henry Boughton was born near Norwich in Norfolk, England. Boughton’ s father sought a better future for his family, and when George was just a small child, they sailed for the United States, settling in Albany, New York. Boughton’ s artistic inkling came at an early age, according to his biographer Alfred Lys Baldry:
He had gone into a store to buy some fishing-tackle, and there caught sight of some paint-tubes. The fascination of these was irresistible, and the money which was to have been spent on fish-hooks was laid out instead upon a selection of colours— a striking proof, indeed, that, boy though he was, the artistic craving was strong enough in him to overpower even his love of sport.
Boughton opened his first studio before he was twenty, and in 1853, the American Art Union purchased The Wayfarer, which financed a six-month trip to England. He then returned to the United States and showed his work at the National Academy of Design where his painting Winter Twilight was an instant success. With the financial backing from a wealthy New York comrade and the desire to return to Europe, Boughton traveled to Paris in 1860. There, he studied informally under Edward Harrison May and Pierre Edouard Frère. After two years, and despite having purchased a return ticket to New York, he chose to live in Europe for the rest of his life, opening a studio at 23 Newman Street in London in 1862.
Although known for a variety of subjects, Boughton’ s scenes of early American history drew the attention of fellow artist Vincent van Gogh. In a letter to his brother Theo dated July 20, 1873, van Gogh specifically references Boughton’ s painting, Puritain allant à l’ église, and writes that he has“… seen very beautiful things by
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema( Dutch, 1836 – 1912), George H. Boughton, ca. 1893, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library
him.” Boughton is also known for numerous illustrations which are published in Nathaniel Hawthorne’ s The Scarlet Letter and Washington Irving’ s Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. As a culmination to his long and prestigious career, Boughton became a full Royal Academician in 1896.
REFERENCES: Bakker, Nienke, Leo Jansen, and Hans Luijten, eds. Vincent Van
Gogh: The Letters. London: Thames & Hudson, 2010. Baldry, Alfred Lys. George H. Boughton( Royal Academician) His
Life and Work. London: Virtue & Co., 1904. Dearinger, David Bernard. ed. Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design. Volume 1, 1826 – 1925. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2004.
56 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting