George Henry Boughton

George Henry Boughton, self-portrait, 1884

George Henry Boughton (born December 4, 1833 near Norwich , † January 19, 1905 in London ) was an English-American landscape and genre painter and illustrator .

Life

George Henry Boughton moved with his parents to the United States in Albany, New York, in early childhood . He was intended for the merchant class, but showed a much greater desire for painting, was self-taught in this art and tried his hand at the painting The Wayfarer ( The Wanderer ) in 1853 , which the New York Art Association bought. Encouraged by this, he set up a studio in Albany. After he had made in 1856 landscape in England studies, he set in 1858 in the Academy of Design in New York Winter Twilight ( A dawn in winter ) from which paintings attracted so much attention that he was induced to emigrate there. Two years later he went to Paris to study and took art lessons first from Edward Harrison May , then from Pierre Édouard Frère .

On the return journey (1862), Boughton stayed in London for a few months and exhibited the symbolic picture Passing into the shade (or The Evening of Life ). It was so acclaimed that he took up permanent residence in Campden Hill, near London. In London he exhibited a series of genre pictures with a landscape background since 1863, which captivate with their simplicity of drawing, versatility of thoughts, depth of sensation and a soft, graceful coloring. On February 9, 1865, he married Katherine Louisa, b. Cullen (* 1845; † after 1901), with whom he had an adopted daughter, Florence. In 1879 he became an associate and in 1896 a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts . He died of heart disease in Campden Hill on January 19, 1905, at the age of 71.

As important paintings Boughton mentioned: Through the Fields ( Through the Fields , 1863), hop pickers returning ( The Return of the hop collectors , 1863), A Breton Haymaker ( The hay harvest in Brittany , 1866), Wayside Devotion ( Devotion at Weg , 1866), Early Puritans of New England Going to the Church ( The Puritans in New England on their way to worship , 1867), Breton Pastoral ( A pastoral scene from Brittany , 1868), Snow in Spring ( Snow in Spring , 1877) , the load carrier (1878) and the Waning of the honeymoon ( the end of the honeymoon , 1878).

literature

• George Henry Boughton . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 3, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 272.
• Martin Hardie: Boughton, George Henry . In: Dictionary of National Biography , Supplements 1912, Vol. 1, pp. 197f.