Henry Boughton

George Henry Boughton RA (1833-1905) was an Anglo-American landscape and genre painter, illustrator and writer.

Boughton was born in Norwich in the UK, the son of farmer William Boughton. The family immigrated to the United States in 1835, and he grew up in Albany, New York, where he started his career as a self-taught artist. 

By the age of 19, Boughton was recognised as a landscape painter and opened his first studio in 1852. In 1853, the American Art Union purchased one of his early pictures which financed six months of studying art in England. He concluded this period of his training with a sketching tour of the Lake District, Scotland and Ireland.

After returning to the US, Boughton exhibited his works in Washington D.C. and New York City, but in the late 1850s he finally decided to move to Europe. From 1859-61 he studied art in France under Pierre Edouard Frère (1819-1886) and Edward Harrison May (1824-1887). In 1861, Boughton opened a studio in London.

Boughton illustrated Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems. In 1893, the edition of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow was published in London with 53 illustrations by Boughton. 

In the 1870s in London he met James Whistler. In 1878, an American reviewer praised them as "shining lights in the art world" of London. Boughton published vivid recollections about Whistler, particularly mentioning his work on the famous ‘Peacock Room'. In 1877 he made an acquaintance with Henry James (1843-1916).

Boughton died of heart disease, on 19 January 1905, in his studio at Campden Hill, north London.