Alfred Howland
American (1838-1909)
Alfred Howland was born in Wadpole, New Hampshire in 1838, the son of a builder. He began his artistic training as a lithographer in Boston in 1857, moved to New York a year later and took classes at the National Academy while continuing his lithography work. Howland went to Dusseldorf in 1859 to study at the Royal Academy under Andreas Müller and later Albert Flamm. He then worked with Emile Lambinet in Paris for two years. While in France, Howland met Camille Corot, who introduced him to other Barbizon painters. The Barbizon School would remain a source of inspiration for the rest of Howland’s career. He returned to New York in 1864, exhibited at the National Academy, and took up a teaching post at Cooper Union in 1865. He was elected Academician in 1880 and became a council member the same year.
Howland specialized in genre paintings and landscapes of his native New England, executed with the reverence for light and nature that also characterizes the work of his friends Corot, Rousseau, and Millet.
Howland works reside in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Milwaukee Art Museum and Yale University Art Gallery.
