After graduating from the Walpole Academy in 1855, Alfred Howland moved to Boston in 1857 to study drawing and lithography with Max Eppendorff and Paul Schulze. A year later, he relocated to New York, obtaining work as a lithographer. He found time to study at the National Academy, registering for the 1858-59 antique class and the 1859-60 life class. Howland sailed for Europe in June 1860. He spent a year at the Düsseldorf Akademie studying under Andreas Müller, followed by a year and a half in the private studio of the Düsseldorf artist Albert Flamm. A crucial move to Paris allowed him almost two more years of instruction, under Emile Lambinet. While in France, he met Camille Corot, who introduced him to several French Barbizon School landscape painters. Their influence marked his work for the rest of his career.
Howland returned to New York in 1864 and began exhibiting at the National Academy. By 1865 he was teaching at the Cooper Union. In 1871 he married Clara Ward in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the location of a summer home he would occupy during parts of his career. Many of his landscape subjects were taken from the Williamstown area as well as from parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Long Island, and upstate New York. In his later years, Howland spent winters in Pasadena, California.
Howland was elected to a three-year term on the Academy Council just a year after being elevated to full Academician and about three weeks after he had confirmed that status by delivering his diploma work. He was a Council member again from 1901 to 1903. In 1893 he became involved in a policy disagreement when he was appointed as salesman for an Academy exhibition. There were objections that an artist should not be engaged in selling other artists' works. Howland resigned as salesman on December 18 after the Council adopted a resolution prohibiting members from holding subordinate, nonartistic positions within the Academy. Despite the protests, it appears that Howland would have been ideal in the role, as he was known to direct patrons informally toward works by other artists, often at the expense of his own sales.
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