Thomas Hovenden

Thomas Hovenden (December 28, 1840 - August 14, 1895), American artist, was born in Dunmanway, Co. Cork, Ireland.

He was a pupil of the South Kensington Art Schools and those of the National Academy of Design, New York , whither he had removed in 1863. Subsequently he went to Paris and studied in the École des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but passed most of his time with the American colony in Brittany, at Pont-Aven, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry.

Returning to America in 1880, he became an academician in 1882, and attracted attention by an important canvas of "The Last Moments of John Brown" (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). His "Breaking Home Ties," a picture of American farm life, was engraved with considerable popular success.

Hovenden was mortally injured in a heroic effort to save a child from a railroad train in the station at Germantown, near Philadelphia, and died at Norristown, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of August 1895.

Among his principal works are:

• "News from the Conscript" (1877)
• "Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendée" (1879)
• "A Breton Interior," "Image Seller" and "Jerusalem the Golden" (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

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[[category:Irish artists|Hovenden]