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Edward Lamson Henry
1841–1919
BirthplaceCharleston, South Carolina, United States of America
Death placeEllenville, New York, United States of America
BiographyEdward Lamson Henry painted detailed, anecdotal scenes of American life, both contemporary and historical, that expressed his era's fascination with changing technology and nostalgia for vanishing times. Henry was born in Charleston, South Carolina, son of a prosperous banker. When he was seven, his family moved to New York City, but Henry also spent much of his childhood living with his grandparents in Connecticut. Showing an early interest in drawing, he began his artistic training at the age of fourteen with landscape painter Walter M. Oddie (1808–65) in New York. He also took drawing lessons from figure painter Robert Walter Weir (1803–89), and he may have studied under his cousin Samuel Putnam Avery (1822–1904), a noted New York art dealer and collector who began his career as a skilled illustrator and engraver. Henry also studied in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
In 1860, Henry departed for two years of travel and study in Europe, during which he worked under the radical French painter Gustave Courbet (1819–77). While Henry's work shares little of his teacher's iconoclastic realism, its emphasis on everyday life may reflect his teacher's influence. On his return to New York, where he opened a studio in the famed Tenth Street Studio Building, Henry began painting the American views for which he remains best known. He exhibited the first of his railroad images in 1864, the year he joined the Union army and began making wartime sketches, many of which later became the basis for paintings of Civil War subjects.
Henry's paintings were consistently popular. Based in New York, he returned to Europe several times (including a two-year stay following his marriage in 1875) and in 1883 he built a home at Cragsmoor, near rural Ellenville, New York, in the Shawungunk Mountains near the New Jersey border, which became the nucleus of an artists' colony. Henry specialized in depicting rural life with particular attention to vanishing modes, especially in transportation. He painted both panoramic landscape views and intimate interior scenes, often featuring country "types" for whom his acquaintances served as models. An enthusiastic photographer, Henry also avidly collected antique furniture, carriages, and costume, and he worked to preserve historical structures. Both as a collector and preservationist and as a painter, he is considered a catalyst of the so-called Colonial Revival that swept the United States following the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
Henry was elected a full member of the prestigious National Academy of Design in 1869. In the course of his long career he won numerous awards, including medals at world expositions in Chicago in 1893, Buffalo in 1901, Charleston in 1902, and St. Louis in 1904. Although his paintings were widely considered old-fashioned in the latter years of the artist's life, they frequently were reproduced, testimony to their popularity among a wide American public. Henry's works continue to garner respect both as documents of American life and as a record of late nineteenth-century Americans' affection for bygone ways.
In 1860, Henry departed for two years of travel and study in Europe, during which he worked under the radical French painter Gustave Courbet (1819–77). While Henry's work shares little of his teacher's iconoclastic realism, its emphasis on everyday life may reflect his teacher's influence. On his return to New York, where he opened a studio in the famed Tenth Street Studio Building, Henry began painting the American views for which he remains best known. He exhibited the first of his railroad images in 1864, the year he joined the Union army and began making wartime sketches, many of which later became the basis for paintings of Civil War subjects.
Henry's paintings were consistently popular. Based in New York, he returned to Europe several times (including a two-year stay following his marriage in 1875) and in 1883 he built a home at Cragsmoor, near rural Ellenville, New York, in the Shawungunk Mountains near the New Jersey border, which became the nucleus of an artists' colony. Henry specialized in depicting rural life with particular attention to vanishing modes, especially in transportation. He painted both panoramic landscape views and intimate interior scenes, often featuring country "types" for whom his acquaintances served as models. An enthusiastic photographer, Henry also avidly collected antique furniture, carriages, and costume, and he worked to preserve historical structures. Both as a collector and preservationist and as a painter, he is considered a catalyst of the so-called Colonial Revival that swept the United States following the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
Henry was elected a full member of the prestigious National Academy of Design in 1869. In the course of his long career he won numerous awards, including medals at world expositions in Chicago in 1893, Buffalo in 1901, Charleston in 1902, and St. Louis in 1904. Although his paintings were widely considered old-fashioned in the latter years of the artist's life, they frequently were reproduced, testimony to their popularity among a wide American public. Henry's works continue to garner respect both as documents of American life and as a record of late nineteenth-century Americans' affection for bygone ways.