Though born in the East, Yewell spent his youth in the West, his widowed mother having decided to settle in Iowa City in 1841. His early talent at caricatures brought the young artist to the attention of Judge Charles Mason, who recommended Yewell to go to New York for formal instruction. Yewell studied at the NAD and in the studio of Thomas Hicks from 1851 until 1865, when Hicks sent him to study in Paris with his former teacher, Thomas Couture. Yewell spent six years in Paris before returning to New York City. Yewell returned to Europe in 1867. After spending some time in Venice, the artist settled in Rome where he became part of the American artist colony and befriended Elihu Vedder. On the advice of the writer Bayard Taylor, who became a friend and student of Yewell's in 1868, Yewell traveled to Cairo in 1875. By 1879 Yewell had returned to New York and settled in the Tenth Street Studio Building, where he resided until 1882, and returned to in 1895, after a stay on Fifth Avenue. Yewell occasionally returned to Iowa City during the latter years of his career, and spent his summers at Lake George, where he died.
Yewell painted a variety of subjects including portraits, landscapes and genre scenes, but his interiors are among the most original of his works. He began exhibiting at the NAD in 1853, and continued to show almost annually throughout his career. He also occasionally exhibited at the Paris Salon.
Upon his death the Council remembered him with the following words, which also serve to add to some possible information regarding his life:
The life of our oldest member - George H. Yewell - very nearly covered the life of the Academy which was hardly four years old when George's mother presented the prospective Academician to the world and made him a littled Marylander, at Harve-de-Grace, on January 30th, 1830. His family seems to gone to Illinois, for when he decided to study art, he started from that (in those days) far western State in a stage coach, completing his journey to New York by rail...
An interesting and pleasant letter from him written immediately after his arrival in New York, was read from the pulpit [at his memorial service]. In it he gave some of his ideas of the Metropolis, noted the price he paid for his bedroom on Broadway and said that he had entered the art class of Thomas Hicks.
His long life was uneventful save for service during the civil war, but he was a most loyal Academician, loved by all his comrades and at the Annual Lunch of the Academy - election day - his health was drunk by all present and to his own great satisfaction.
