Destined to become a member of the second generation of Hudson River school landscape painters, Shattuck was educated in Francestown and in Lowell, Massachusetts, and had his first formal art training under Alexander Ransom in Boston. In 1852, Ransom took Shattuck to New York where the young artist continued his studies at the National Academy, enrolling in the antique and life classes from 1852 to 1855, again in 1859-60, and finally in 1863-64.
Shattuck's first specialization was portraiture, but soon he was painting more and more landscapes. He decided to settle permanently in New York and by 1856 had taken rooms in the Tenth Street Studio Building which he occupied until 1896. He began exhibiting works at the Academy in 1855 when he showed a portrait owned by his teacher Ransom, and continued to do so in almost every year until the mid 1880s. In 1860, he married Marian Colman, sister of the landscape painter Samuel Colman.
For the purposes of creating art, Shattuck began frequenting the White Mountains and the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic rivers in the mid 1850s. Other than these short trips, however, he traveled little, concentrating his energy on the scenery that was available in the northeast. He bought a farm in Granby, Connecticut, in 1870, where he lived for the rest of his life, breeding, raising, and painting cattle and sheep. He invented a canvas stretcher key, known as the "Shattuck Stretcher", patented in 1883, which became quite popular among artists of the time.
Due to a serious illness which affected his eyesight, Shattuck was forced to retire from painting in 1888 but was able to live very well on income from the "Stretcher" and from the Connecticut farm.
