Henry Parton first attended public school and then the Hudson Academy in the town of his birth. He began painting under the tutleage of his older brothers Arthur (ANA 187l, NA 1884) and Ernest and often accompanied them on painting trips to the Adirondacks.
Parton began painting in watercolor, first flowers, then figures and portraiture, and finally landscape. He was principally known for his landscape paintings which, in his early work, show the influence of such painters as A. B. Durand and Sandford Gifford.
Henry visited England numerous times to see his brother Ernest who resided there after 1873; and exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 1876 Parton was in Paris where he studied with the designer Eugene Petit. Returning to New York he took a position at the Alexander Smith Carpet Company, Yonkers, where he served as head of the rug design department until 19l3.
Parton maintained a studio in the l0th Street Studio Building, New York, (188l-92) where he was a neighbor of Frederic Church.
In the 1920s Parton summered in the Berkshires and exhibited his works at the annual exhibitions of the Stockbridge Art Association. He was friends with Margaret French Cresson, and a number of his paintings are at Chesterwood, the estabe of D. C. French, Stockbridge.
Parton also made a number of painting trips to Colorado; his interest in western subjects was influenced perhaps by tales from his sister Gertrude who served as a methodist missionary to the Indians in the 1880s.
