subject: Thomas Hovenden - China Oil Pumping Unit - Drilling Rig And Tool Manufacturer [print this page] Thomas Hovenden Thomas Hovenden
Thomas Hovenden in 1895
Born
December 28, 1840(1840-12-28)
Dunmanway, Co. Cork, Ireland
Died
August 14, 1895(1895-08-15)
Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality
Irish-American
Field
Painting
Training
Cork School of Design
National Academy of Design
cole des Beaux Arts under Cabanel
Works
The Last Moments of John Brown (1884)
Breaking Home Ties (1890)
Thomas Hovenden (December 28, 1840 August 14, 1895), was an Irish-American artist and teacher. He painted realistic quiet family scenes, narrative subjects and often depicted African Americans.
Hovenden was born in Dunmanway, Co. Cork, Ireland. His parents died at the time of the potato famine and he was placed in an orphanage at the age of six. Apprenticed to a carver and gilder, he studied at the Cork School of Design.
In 1863, he immigrated to the United States. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He moved to Baltimore in 1868 and then left for Paris in 1874. He studied at the cole des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but spent most of his time with the American colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany led by Robert Wylie, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry.
Returning to America in 1880, he became a member of the Society of American Artists and an Associate member of the National Academy of Design (elected Academician in 1882). He married Helen Corson in 1881, an artist he had met in Pont-Aven, and settled at her father's homestead in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. She came from a family of abolitionists and her home was a stop on the underground railroad. Their barn, later used as Hovenden's studio, was known as "Abolition Hall" due to its use for anti-slavery meetings.
He was commissioned to paint a historical picture of the abolitionist leader John Brown. He finished "The Last Moments of John Brown" (now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) in 1884. His "Breaking Home Ties", a picture of American farm life, was engraved with considerable popular success.
In 1886, he was appointed Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, replacing Thomas Eakins who was dismissed due to his use of nude models. Among Hovenden's students were the sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder and the leader of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri.
Hovenden was killed at the age of 54, along with a ten-year old girl, by a railroad locomotive at a crossing near his home in Plymouth Meeting. Newspaper accounts reported that his death was the result of a heroic effort to save the girl, while a coroner's inquest determined his death was an accident.
A Pennsylvania state historical marker in Plymouth Meeting interprets Abolition Hall and Hovenden.
Selected works
'The Last Moments of John Brown', oil on canvas painting by Thomas Hovenden
Self-Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, 1875, Yale University Art Gallery
Image Seller, 1876, Metropolitan Museum of Art
News from the Conscript, 1877
Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vende, 1877
A Breton Interior, 1793, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art
In Hoc Signo Vinces, 1880, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
The Old Version, 1881, San Francisco Museum of Fine Art
Sunday Morning, 1881, San Francisco Museum of Fine Art
The Last Moments of John Brown, 1882-4, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Taking His Ease, 1885, San Francisco Museum of Fine Art
Breaking Home Ties, 1890, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Jerusalem the Golden, 1894, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Notes
^ a b Thomas Hovenden: American Painter of Hearth and Homeland, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, 1995. ISBN 1-888008-00-8.
^ A replica of the painting is at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
^ Abolition Hall marker
Categories: 1840 births | 1895 deaths | American painters | Irish Americans | Irish painters | People from County Cork | Artists from Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts facultyHidden categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica
