Albert Fitch Bellows was attracted to a career in fine art at an early age and was apprenticed to the Boston architectural firm of A.B. Young at the age of sixteen. In 1849 he went into partnership with an established architect, John D. Toule. However, within a year he had given up architecture to become principal of the New England School of Design, Boston, in which post he remained until 1856, when he went to Europe. He seems to have passed most of a year abroad in Antwerp, devoting his attention to figure and portrait painting. In 1858, Bellows was elected an honorary member of the Royal Society of Painters in Belgium, an honor apparently granted after the artist had returned to America because in 1857, the first year he work appeared in an Academy annual he gave a studio address in New York. Bellows remained in New York for the next decade, with the possible exception of some period of time spent in Canada, for in 1862, his address given in the Academy annnual catalogue was Montreal.
Bellows took up a strong interest in water color painting in 1865. He returned to Europe in 1867 for a stay of sixteen months in England where he was in contact with with leading British artists in water color. He must also have renewed his connections in Belgium for in 1868 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Belgian Society of Painters in Water Colors. In that year, Bellows returned to New York, and the American Society of Painters in Water Color, of which he was a member, published his book, Water Color Painting: Some Facts and Authorities in Relation to its Durability.
By 1872, Bellows was living in Boston, where his studio was destroyed in the great fire of that year. However, he continued to give a Boston address when exhibiting in Academy Annuals through 1875. From 1876 through the remainder of his life he lived and worked in New York.
Later in his career, the artist worked in etching. He became a member of the New York Etching Club, the Philadelphia Society of Etchers and the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers and Engravers, London.
In addition to exhibiting almost annually at the NAD from 1857 until 1883--consistently showing landscape subjects, Bellows also showed in Baltimore, Boston, in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and in London and in the 1878 Paris Exposition.
Bellows served one term on the Academy Council, 1879-80.
Upon his death, he was memorialized in Academy minutes of November 26, 1883: . . . His professional life and work were always in full accord with the sincerity and truth of his personal character and the distinguished position which he held as an artist was fairly won by his Faithful and loving representations of nature in her most familiar and most picturesque forms.
