ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
George Henry Boughton RA (4 December 1833 – 19 January 1905) was an Anglo-American landscape and genre painter, illustrator, and writer.
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Boughton was born in Norwich in Norfolk, England, 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. At this early stage, he was influenced by the artists of the Hudson River School. By the age of 19, he was recognized 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.
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After coming back to the USA, Boughton exhibited his works in Washington, D.C., and New York, but in the late 1850s, he finally made a decision to move to Europe. From 1859–61 he studied art in France under Pierre Edouard Frère (1819–1886) and Edward Harrison May (1824–1887).