American Artist Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919) ~ Blog of an Art Admirer

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American Artist Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919)

The artist was born in Charleston, SC.
His parents died when he was 7 and he was taken to New York to live with his cousins, the Stows.
Henry was a talented child, put to drawing to keep him quiet in church.
Later, he had to overcome opposition from his family before he was permitted to study art.
By some reports, he was raised as his mother's nephew in order to keep his parents' stealthy marriage a secret.
At the age of 17, Edward enrolled in the Paris to study art and improve his techniques, and where he worked with famous Parisian artists Gustave Courbet and Charles Gleyre.
In two years he returned to the US and served as a captain's desk clerk for the Union Army.
After the war he settled in Greenwich Village, in New York, where he was soon recognized as a talented artist and rewarded by the National Academy of Design. Two years later he earned the title of academician.
Henry was also a member of the New York Historical Society. Because of his great attention to detail, His paintings of colonial and early American themes, highly detailed, were treated by contemporaries as authentic historical reconstructions.
Henry's nostalgic genre paintings were highly sought after by his contemporaries. His artworks were often reproduced in photogravures, etchings and on calendars. He is not considered to be among the great American painters, although his paintings were extremely popular throughout his life.