Blauvelt received his training in the Academy school, beginning attending the Antique class in January 1844, when he is noted as a "Coach painter," and continuing to enroll through the 1845-46 season, when he is noted as "intended Portrait painter." After a year's absence, he returned to the school for the 1847-48 (now listed as "Portrait painter") and 1848-49 seasons. He is said to have studied "colors" with Charles Loring Elliott.
He worked in New York, initially as a portraitist but from the mid-1850s as a specialist in genre subjects, until 1862 when he moved to Philadelphia. Returning to New York in 1867, he established his residence in Yonkers. In 1872, Blauvelt became an instructor of drawing at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and by 1878 he was an assistant professor in the art department. He remained on the Annapolis faculty until 1898.
Blauvelt first exhibited at the Academy in 1847, and continued to be regularly represented in the annual exhibitions until 1868; thereafter his work only appeared in 1877 and 1880. His genre scenes met with popular and critical success. The New York Herald critic reviewing the 1855 Academy Annual named Blauvelt's contribution, The German Immigrant, a fine example of the "Dsseldorf school." In 1860, No News, showing an old man napping over the Herald, drew both praise and appreciative amusement in that newspapers' review of the AcademyÿAnnual. (April 24, 1860). In addition to exhibiting at the Academy and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Blauvelt showed at the Washington (D. C.) Art Association, the Boston Athenaeum, and had works acquired by the American Art-Union.
The memorials read into the minutes of the Academy's annual meeting of 1901 were numerous; death's toll had been heavy over the previous year: individual tributes to Blauvelt, William Beard, Frederic Church, Jared B. Flagg, William Stanley Haseltine, Alfred Jones, and William Sonntag concluded with the statement:
These men belonged to the rugged "Old Guard" of the Academy, and were leaders in the fight for Truth as they saw it. They had convictions and lived true to them. They were American artists and were proud of it, -as we of them. And while many of us now carrying on the work they have relinquished, never came within their orbit, their names are familiar to us through the loving voices of their contemporaries and are echos of a time when America had a distinctive School, and the Academy under their guidance represented it in the highest sense. Their work is finished, they have signed it, and we can say of each, "Well done, Thou good and faithful Servant."
