Charles Franklin Pierce

American (1844-1920)

New England landscapist Charles Franklin Pierce (1844-1920) was born in Sharon, New Hampshire and spent his youth on the family farm in nearby Peterborough, a place that nurtured his lifelong appreciation for rural and pastoral landscapes. After moving to Boston to attend art school in 1864, Pierce undertook a journey around England, Scotland, and Wales and returned to the United States in the early 1870s. He joined numerous artistic societies, including the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters, and exhibited regularly at the annual shows of the Boston Art Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery. In the late 1870s, Pierce returned to Europe for a yearlong painting and sketching tour, a portion of which he spent in Paris, where he shared a studio with noted American painters William Henry Lippincott, Edwin Blashfield, and Milne Ramsey.