1. Thomas Hovenden was an Irish artist and teacher who spent much of his life in the United States.
14 Facts About Thomas Hovenden
1. 2.
Thomas Hovenden painted realistic quiet family scenes and narrative subjects and often depicted African Americans.
3.
Thomas Hovenden's parents died at the time of the Great Famine and he was placed in an orphanage at the age of six.
4.
Thomas Hovenden studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City.
5.
Thomas Hovenden moved to Baltimore in 1868 and then left for Paris in 1874.
6.
Thomas Hovenden studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but spent most of his time with the American art colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany led by Robert Wylie, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry.
7.
Thomas Hovenden married Helen Corson in 1881, an artist he had met in Pont-Aven, and settled at her father's homestead in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.
8.
Thomas Hovenden came from a family of abolitionists and her home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
9.
Thomas Hovenden was commissioned by Mr Robbins Battell to paint a historical picture of the abolitionist leader John Brown.
10.
Thomas Hovenden finished The Last Moments of John Brown in 1884.
11.
Thomas Hovenden's Breaking Home Ties, a picture of American farm life, was engraved with considerable popular success.
12.
Thomas Hovenden was killed at the age of 54, along with a ten-year-old girl, by a railroad locomotive at a crossing near his home in Plymouth Meeting.
13.
Thomas Hovenden is buried across the street in the cemetery of the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse.
14.
Thomas Hovenden's images were different than many made by his contemporaries, because he showed the Black couple as having a sense of dignity, rather than being caricatures.