Edward Greene made his first appearance in the annals of American art with the inclusion of his painting L'Innocente in the Boston Athenaeum exhibition of 1846. Where he had spent the twenty-three years between his birth and this professional debut is unknown, but it probably was in Boston, the Boston to which Washington Allston had returned from England in 1818. The influence of Allston, America's most revered artist of the first half of the nineteenth century, is evident in Greene's choice of subject matter-idealized female heads and figures, serving as vehicles of romantic sentiment-and in his softly atmospheric manner of painting them.
Greene's next appearance was in the 1850 exhibition of the American Art-Union. L'Innocente, presumably the same canvas as had been shown in Boston four years earlier, was the work that introduced him to a New York audience. It is likely that Greene moved to New York at about this time. He may have been settled in the city, making it convenient for agents of the Art-Union to see and select one of his paintings; or perhaps the encouragement of the Art-Union's patronage occasioned the move. By the spring of 1851, when he was first represented in an Academy annual exhibition, Greene's address was on Broadway. In November 1851 he registered in the Academy school's life class.
For the next fifteen years his portraits and idealized figures were to be seen in every Academy annual except those of 1862 and 1864, frequently in the Boston Athenaeum's annual exhibitions, and on two occasions at the annuals of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1857 he was represented in the Washington (D.C.) Art Association and the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute annuals; in the latter he showed a miniature. In 1863 he showed two paintings in the Brooklyn Art Association exhibition, and the next year his work was included in the sanitary fairs of New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. Evidently, Greene's last appearances in the artistic arena were in 1865, when his Minora (seen at the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair the previous year) was shown in the Utica (N.Y.) Mechanics' Association exhibition and Dreams was his sole contribution to the Academy annual.
Thereafter, Greene appears to have given up the role of an active artist. His output seems never to have been prolific; the works shown in cities outside New York had generally already been introduced in Academy annuals. It is possible that in the last fourteen years of his life Greene limited his practice to commissioned portraits, but the fact that he did not continue to contribute new subjects to Academy exhibitions, where artists commonly placed such works by courtesy of their patrons, suggests that he was not working at all. In 1872 John F. Kensett lent an Ideal Head by Greene to the Brooklyn Art Association exhibition. His Mother's Vision was in the 1874 Academy annual, but it had been shown a decade earlier in the Brooklyn Art Association exhibition. Whether Stella, shown in the 1876 Academy annual, was an earlier work under a new title or a fresh painting cannot be determined. In that same year the Academy loaned Greene's Repose to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, an indication that admiration for his work had not diminished.
Greene was not idle, nor had he removed himself from the art scene during these fourteen years. Late in 1865 the Council had appointed him to fill the remainder of the recently deceased James A. Suydam's term as Academy treasurer, and he was elected to that post annually through the year of his death. It is tempting to think that the duties of treasurer-which were heavy in this period when the Academy was coping with the expenses of operating in its newly built headquarters at Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue-are what kept Greene from his easel.
(Although nothing is known of Greene's background, it might be noted that in its two previous treasurers the Academy had chosen men who had experience in business, or in the making of, or handling of, substantial fortunes. Greene seems at least to have belonged in the latter category. He appears not to have depended on his art to sustain a living. Yet by the terms of his will, his half-sister had the use of $5,000, which passed to the Academy on her death; it was received in January 1882.)
That Greene was devoted to his Academy duties is evident. Within two years of Greene's assuming the post, Henry Tuckerman, in his sole reference to the artist, noted his Academy officership and paintings equally: "Greene, the faithful treasurer of the National Academy, has executed several beautiful female portraits, some of them ideal, and remarkable for exquisite finish."
It is also evident from Academy records that Greene was exceptionally well liked and respected by his fellow artists. Nowhere is the esteem in which he was held better demonstrated than by the fact that a special meeting of the Council was called on June 18, 1879, the day after he died, to enter into minutes the following tribute:
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In the sudden death of our fellow Academician and Treasurer, Edward
D. E. Greene, the Academy mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished members, of a singularly able and faithful officer and of a most genial and beloved companion.
Mr. Green was born in Boston and settling early in life in New York, pursued the study of Art with the humble devotion and true feeling which he preserved throughout his career and from which grew those charming embodiments of the grace, purity and loveliness of womanhood, those poems in color, but which he justly earned and will ever maintain his high professional repute.
In 1865 he accepted with characteristic diffidence the office of Treasurer which position he continued to fill to the day of his death always discharging his duties with the utmost care and ability.
He was a man of unsullied probity and of deep conscientiousness of character, of rare qualities of nature and of the most amicable and loveable temper and leaving instinctively all which is evil and cleaving to all that is beautiful and good. The Memory of his pure life and of his successful career will be a precious legacy to his family and friends and an enduring honour to the Academy and to his profession.
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Greene's funeral was held at the Academy two days later, with, as the New York Daily Tribune reported, "a large company of ladies and gentlemen, embracing academicians, artists and persons engaged in literary pursuits and the professions assembled . . . filling the Council chamber and the two adjoining rooms which form the library."
The tribute read at the annual meeting of 1880 further reveals the warm regard in which Greene was held by his colleagues, as well as something of his personality.
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Mr. Greene was one of those extremely sensitive and retiring characters which shrink from observation and so fastidious as to his own productions that he rarely exhibited but always when he did so, secured the admiration and respect of those intelligent observers who appreciated the refinement and delicacy of his mind and the extreme subtlety and almost impassable evanescence and spirituality of the sentiment he aimed to produce. Notwithstanding his highly nervous and sensitive temperament he was a man of accurate business habits and faithfully performed his duties of Treasurer for the many years he was entrusted with our affairs.
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