Because of embarrassing circumstances surrounding his parents' marriage, Edward Lamson Henry was raised as his mother's nephew, with a different surname (Henry) from that of his siblings (Stow). After the family moved to New York in 1847, he spent time with his grandparents in Connecticut. By 1855, while still in his teens, he was studying in New York with the landscape painter Walter M. Oddie. He also took drawing lessons from Robert W. Weir at West Point. In 1858 Henry was sent to Philadelphia, where he studied under Paul Weber and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. At the academy he met fellow artist Eliza Greatorex, with whom he shared a long friendship and interests in American architecture and antiques. It was from Philadelphia in 1859 that he sent his first contribution to a National Academy annual. Thereafter, he exhibited nearly every year until his death.
Henry made the first of several European trips in 1860. In France he studied under Gustave Courbet and Marc-Gabriel-Charles Gleyre, but by 1861 he had left to travel in Northern Europe and Italy, where he met Elihu Vedder. Returning to New York during the summer of 1862, he established a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building within a year, maintaining it until 1885. Henry served as a clerk in the Union Army in 1864, and he was able to paint several Civil War pictures as a result of his firsthand sketching. After the war, his detailed genre scenes, often with railroad themes, became successful. He carefully researched the costumes and objects that appear in his work. (The Academy library register documents his occasional use of costume books between 1870 and 1897.)
Henry married Frances Wells in 1875; they had met two years earlier at a Tenth Street Studio Building reception. After a honeymoon of nearly two years in Europe, they settled down to a quiet New York existence. Several years later they bought land on the mountain now known as Cragsmoor, north of New York City. With a summer home built there by 1884, Henry was an early resident of what was to become a small artists' colony.
Henry served one term on the Academy Council, from 1883 to 1885. Toward the end of the century he was part of a conservative coalition of Academicians whose goals were symbolized by the successful championing of Thomas Waterman Wood for president over the more progressive Frederick Dielman.
Henry was widely recognized for his painstaking reconstructions of early-nineteenth-century American life. His paintings attained popularity through hand-colored reproductions, and he was also known for his collection of antiques, carriages, and costumes as well as for his efforts to preserve "landmark" American buildings. His career was long and consistent, but he lived to witness the change in popular taste that ultimately caused him to be seen as a retrograde, conservative painter of nostalgia. In later years, he wintered in Florida. He died of pneumonia after catching cold on a northbound train ride following one such stay.
JD