Raised by his grandparents in Boston after the remarriage of his mother, Edmund Tarbell began drawing lessons there under George Bartlett. By 1876, he was working for the W.H. Forbes lithographic firm, where he remained three years. A period of study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts followed; his teachers were Otto Grundmann and Frederic Crowninshield. With his fellow student Eugene Benson, Tarbell left for study in Paris in 1883. After three years of work at the Acad‚mie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, he returned to the United States.
Tarbell initially settled in Dorcester, MA, but Boston became his primary address with New Castle serving as his summer home. A year after his 1888 marriage to Emeline A. Souther, he began a 23-year career of teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Among his students were Joseph DeCamp and Philip Leslie Hale. By 1890, Tarbell was turning toward an impressionist style. His works were generally well received at the National Academy, which gave him its First Hallgarten Prize in 1894. His election that year as an associate member of the Academy was voided when he failed to contribute a diploma portrait. Three years later, he was one of several artists to resign from the Society of American Artists to form the exhibiting organization, The Ten. His last important teaching post was as director of the Corcoran Gallery School.
