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Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895)
A Wayside Chat
Oil on canvas, 81 x 60cm (32 x 23¾”)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1875
Exhibited :
The French Connection
Exhibition,The Ava Gallery Clandeboye, August/September 2010; The Hunt Museum Limerick,
September/October 2010 Cat. No. 10.
Literature :
The French Connection
by Aoife Leach, 2010, illustrated p.16; and
American Dream
Article on Thomas Hovenden, Irish Arts Review Vol 27 No. 3 illustrated p.98
Thomas Hovenden was born in Dunmanway, Co. Cork in 1840, but was orphaned during the Great Famine in 1847 when both his parents
died and at the age of six he was sent to an orphanage in Cork city. Nine years later he became apprenticed to the Cork carver and gilder
George Tolerton who noted Hovenden’s skill as a draughtsman and sent him to the Cork School of Design (later to become the Crawford)
in 1858. Part of the South Kensington School, the Cork School promoted the ideas of Aestheticism and the teachings of John Ruskin.
Although the school focused on design, Hovenden subscribed to the notion of painting as a higher art with a social and moral purpose and
advanced his draughtsmanship by sketching the schools collection of Antonio Canova’s plaster cast statuary as well as plein air watercolours.
Following his brother, in 1863 Hovenden emigrated to New York. There he studied at the National Academy of Design under Charles
Parsons and managed to set up his own studio. With funding from an art collector John Mc Coy and his buisness partner William Walters
Hovenden went to Paris in 1874. He studied at the École des Beaux Arts under Alexandre Cabnel before travelling to Pont-Aven where
this work was painted. Here he was to meet other Irish artists as well as his future wife Helen Corson. When they married they returned to
America and settled in Plymouth Meeting,Pennsylvania.
Hovenden went on to become a member of the Society of American Artists (1881), the American Watercolour Society (1882), the Philadel-
phia Society of Artists (1883), the New York Etching Club (1885), and an Associate member of the National Academy of Design (1881). He
succeededThomas Eakins as Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886-88), where his students
included Alexander Calder and Robert Henri. Hovenden arrived in America at the end of the Civil War and rose to fame painting patriotic
scenes in sympathy with the American version of Victorian values, and later became known for his paintings of African Americans during
the Abolitionist movement. Yet it is the time he spent painting in Pont-Aven, that puts him into an Irish context, and while he is not known
to have returned to Ireland, his influence is seen in the work of his contemporaries, in particular that of Aloysius O’Kelly.
Hovenden and O’Kelly first met at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1874 and shared accommodation at the Pension Gloanec in Pont-
Aven.They found subjects for their work not only in the local Bretons but in each other, and a sketch inscribed ‘A O’Kelly’ was included in
an exhibition of Hovenden’s work at the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia in 1995. In her recent book on O’Kelly, Niamh O’Sullivan
argues that it is a sketch of Hovenden by O’Kelly rather than the other way around as catalogued for the exhibition. O’Sullivan also makes a
direct comparison between O’Kelly’s work and that of Hugh Bolton Jones, the painter who had been one of Hovenden’s closest friends since
1867. O’Kelly and Hovenden’s friendship may have continued in the US, where O’Kelly is thought to have spent time from the early 1880s.
It is somehow poignant that O’Kelly petitioned for naturalization in 1895, the year of Hovenden’s untimely death. On 15th August 1895 the
headline “ARTIST HOVENDEN A HERO” ran in the New York Times. Sadly it was the 54 year old’s obituary.Thomas Hovenden died
when he was struck by a train, apparently in an attempt to save a young girl who had wandered onto the tracks.
He received little attention in America from the time of his death until the retrospective held at Woodmere Art Museum in 1995 and a
monograph published in 2006 by University of Pennsylvania Press, despite his success during his lifetime. The fact that his work was long
overlooked has been attributed to the timing of his tragic death. Hovenden was one of the most respected academic painters of his time,
however modern art in the form of Impressionism was becoming fashionable in the States in the 1890s, and as time elapsed after his death,
Hovenden’s legacy faded fast in the shadow of new styles.
We acknowledge Aoife Leach, whose writings formed the basis for this catalogue entry
€50,000 - 70,000
