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for George Peter Alexander Healy
American, 1813 - 1894
George P. A. Healy was raised in Boston and spent much of his youth working at undistinguished jobs in order to help support his family. He had, however, always shown a predilection for the arts, and in 1830, with no formal training, set himself up as an artist in Boston. The following year, Thomas Sully, then visiting Boston, offered encouraging advice but no instruction. Healy first exhibited his portraits in the Boston Athenaeum's annual exhibition of 1832. Despite his lack of training, he received considerable patronage and was thereby able to earn enough money to travel to Paris in 1834, where he studied briefly under Baron Gros. At this time he met the painter Thomas Couture, who became a lifelong friend. After Gros's death in 1835, Healy began working independently in Paris and endeavoring to hone his skills by copying Old Master paintings. Among his growing number of distinguished patrons was Lewis Cass, the American ambassador to France and, most notably, France's new constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe. After sitting to Healy, the ruler commissioned him to make copies of several portraits in the state collection at Versailles.
Intending to add portraits of all the U.S. presidents and other eminent American citizens to the Versailles collection, Louis Philippe commissioned Healy in 1842 to return to his homeland. Healy came back to Paris in 1844 with some of the portraits completed, but he had not delivered the full order before it was of necessity canceled by Louis Philippe's overthrow in 1848. The presidential series, with additions, eventually came into possession of the Corcoran Gallery of American Art, Washington, D.C. The work by which Healy is probably best known is in this group-his 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, for which the newly elected president sat while still in Springfield, Illinois, and before he grew his beard.
Healy continued to enjoy unflagging patronage from important people in both the United States and Europe. In 1851 he completed his largest historical composition, Webster Replying to Hayne (Faneuil Hall, Boston). With the continuing political turmoil in Europe, Healy found it opportune to return to America in 1855 and, building on the welcome extended by Chicago's mayor, William B. Ogden, who posed for him, settled in that city. (Painted in 1855, the portrait in now in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society.) After a dozen years of prodigious activity there, Healy returned to Paris, where he resumed his career as a portraitist with vigor and once more enjoyed distinguished patronage and success. In 1868 he was invited to contribute his self-portrait to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Only at the end of his career did commissions begin to wane. He spent the last two years of his life in Chicago, writing his memoirs.
Healy's association with the Academy was limited to sporadic representation in annual exhibitions, the first occasion being in 1842 and the last in 1887.
JPH
Intending to add portraits of all the U.S. presidents and other eminent American citizens to the Versailles collection, Louis Philippe commissioned Healy in 1842 to return to his homeland. Healy came back to Paris in 1844 with some of the portraits completed, but he had not delivered the full order before it was of necessity canceled by Louis Philippe's overthrow in 1848. The presidential series, with additions, eventually came into possession of the Corcoran Gallery of American Art, Washington, D.C. The work by which Healy is probably best known is in this group-his 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, for which the newly elected president sat while still in Springfield, Illinois, and before he grew his beard.
Healy continued to enjoy unflagging patronage from important people in both the United States and Europe. In 1851 he completed his largest historical composition, Webster Replying to Hayne (Faneuil Hall, Boston). With the continuing political turmoil in Europe, Healy found it opportune to return to America in 1855 and, building on the welcome extended by Chicago's mayor, William B. Ogden, who posed for him, settled in that city. (Painted in 1855, the portrait in now in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society.) After a dozen years of prodigious activity there, Healy returned to Paris, where he resumed his career as a portraitist with vigor and once more enjoyed distinguished patronage and success. In 1868 he was invited to contribute his self-portrait to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Only at the end of his career did commissions begin to wane. He spent the last two years of his life in Chicago, writing his memoirs.
Healy's association with the Academy was limited to sporadic representation in annual exhibitions, the first occasion being in 1842 and the last in 1887.
JPH
