Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919) 'Country Road'. Oil on Panel. Property from the Westervelt Company.

Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919) was prominent American genre painter celebrated for his meticulously detailed “historical fiction”. Though born in Charleston, by age seven his parents had died and henry moved to live with his cousins in New York City. He began studying painting there, and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia. In 1860 he went to Paris, where he studied with Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet, at roughly the same time as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. His work is a cornerstone of the Colonial Revival movement, characterized by a deep nostalgia for a pre-industrial, agrarian America.In 1862, he returned to the United State, where he served as captain’s clerk on a Union transport ship. This experience inspired numerous sketches of military life and the Southern countryside. Accommodation (1867): One of his most famous depictions of early railroad travel, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Henry’s legacy remains strong as his work serves as both a “window into the past” and a record of the late 19th-century American public’s affection for “bygone ways”. In 1869, Henry was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. He died at his home in Ellenville, New York, on May 9, 1919.