American Masters of Painting by Charles H. Caffin

His father, a retired New York grocer, would have had him enter business, and even opened a small store for him in Newark, N.J., whither the family had moved from Newburg. But the son’s mind was set on art. Like Durand, Kensett, and{4} Casilear, he was apprenticed for a short time to an engraver, and subsequently studied painting for a little while with Regis Gignoux, a pupil of Delaroche. For the rest he was self-taught. His contemporary, Frederick E. Church, younger than himself by a year, was seeking instruction from Thomas Cole, the founder of the “Hudson River School,” whose grand topographical landscapes the pupil was to follow in his studies of the Andes, of Niagara, and of other impressive regions.