George Peter Alexander Healy (July 15, 1813 – June 24, 1894) was an American portrait painter. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day, and his sitters included many of the eminent personages of his time. Born in Boston, he studied in Europe, and over his lifetime had studios in Paris and Chicago.
Biography
left|thumb|234x234px|George Peter Alexander Healy in his Paris studio, c. 1884–1894, [[albumen print by Edmond Bénard, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC]]
Healy was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the eldest of five children of an Irish captain in the merchant marine.
Having been left fatherless at a young age, Healy helped to support his mother. At sixteen years of age he began drawing, and at developed an ambition to be an artist. Jane Stuart, daughter of Gilbert Stuart, aided him, loaning him a Guido's "Ecce Homo", which he copied in color and sold to a country priest. Later, she introduced him to Thomas Sully, by whose advice Healy profited, and gratefully repaid Sully in the days of the latter's adversity.
At eighteen, Healy began painting portraits, and was soon very successful. In 1834, he went to Europe, leaving his mother well provided for, and remained abroad sixteen years during which he studied with Antoine-Jean Gros in Paris and in Rome, came under the influence of Thomas Couture, and painted assiduously. He received a third-class medal in the Paris Salon of 1840. In 1843 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. He won a second-class medal in Paris in 1855, when he exhibited his Franklin Urging the Claims of the American Colonies Before Louis XVI.
thumb|150px|Healy's grave at Calvary Cemetery, Evanston, Illinois
In 1855, he returned to the United States, establishing his home and studio in Chicago, Illinois, where he remained based for the next 14 years until 1869. In 1857, he purchased a cottage in Cottage Hill, Illinois (today's Elmhurst) from Thomas Barbour Bryan, adjacent to Bryan's own Byrd's Nest estate. Healy would live in this cottage for the next six years. Bryan would be a significant patron of Healy's art. Healy also partnered with Bryan, as well as William Butler Ogden, Sidney Sawyer, and Edwin H Sheldon, in founding Graceland Cemetery. During the time his studio was based in Chicago, he also traveled in the United States to complete commissions.
Healy went back to Europe in 1869, painting steadily, chiefly in Rome and Paris, for twenty-one years. In 1892, he returned to live near family in Chicago, where he died on June 24, 1894. He was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Evanston.
Healy's autobiography, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, was published in 1894.
Works
thumb|Portrait of the Artist (1851)|alt=|left|215x215pxthumb|199x199px||alt=Healy was a recognized painter of his day. "All my days are spent in my painting room" (Reminiscences).
Among his portraits of eminent persons are those of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Pope Pius IX, Arnold Henry Guyot, William H. Seward, King Louis Philippe I, Marshal Soult, Hawthorne, Prescott, Longfellow, Franz Liszt, Gambetta, Thiers, Lord Lyons, Sallie Ward and the Princess (later the queen) of Romania. He painted portraits of all the presidents of the United States from John Quincy Adams to Ulysses S. Grant—this series being painted for the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. Healy also painted The Peacemakers in 1868 and Abraham Lincoln in 1869. In one large historical work, Webster's Reply to Hayne (1851; in Faneuil Hall, Boston), there are one hundred and thirty portraits.
His principal works include portraits of Lincoln (Corcoran Gallery), Bishop (later Cardinal) McClosky (bishop's residence, Albany), Guizot (1841, in Smithsonian Institution), Audubon (1838, Boston Soc. Nat. Hist.), Comte de Paris (Met. Mus. Of Art, New York), Isaac Thomas Hecker C.S.P., Founder of the Paulist Fathers (North American Paulist Center, Washington, D.C.)
The Newberry Library in Chicago holds 41 of Healy's paintings, donated by the artist in 1887. Most of the works can be found on display throughout the building. The Newberry also holds some letters by Healy, as well as information about the paintings.
Healy's 1877 portrait of a young Lincoln was the model used for a Lincoln postage stamp at the suggestion of Katherine McCook Knox and was issued on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.
Gallery
<gallery mode="packed">
File:Jimbowie.jpg|Jim Bowie, c. 1832
File:Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult Duc de Dalmatie, by George Peter Alexander Healy (English Heritage, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House).jpg|Portrait of Marshal Soult, 1840
File:Euphemia White Van Rensselaer MET DT2051.jpg|Euphemia White Van Rensselaer, 1842,
File:George Peter Alexander Healy - John C. Calhoun - Google Art Project.jpg|John C. Calhoun, c. 1845
File:Andrew Jackson by Healy.jpg|Andrew Jackson, 1845
File:JamesKnoxPolk.png|James Knox Polk, 1846
File:Henry Wheaton by George Peter Alexander Healy.png|Henry Wheaton, c. 1847
File:Richard Washington Corbin by George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|Richard Washington Corbin, 1850
File:George P.A. Healy - Millard Fillmore - Google Art Project.jpg|Millard Fillmore, 1857
File:George P.A. Healy - John Quincy Adams - Google Art Project.jpg|John Quincy Adams, 1858
File:Mvanburen.jpeg|Martin Van Buren, 1858
File:George P.A. Healy - James Knox Polk - Google Art Project.jpg|James Knox Polk, 1858
File:George P.A. Healy - Franklin Pierce - Google Art Project.jpg|Franklin Pierce, 1858
File:George Peter Alexander Healy - James Buchanan - Google Art Project.jpg|James Buchanan, 1859
File:Dr. William Grosvenor by George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|Dr. William Grosvenor, 1859
File:Portrait of Sallie Ward by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1860.jpg|Sallie Ward, 1860
File:NPG.2019.20 Andrew Jackson by George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|Andrew Jackson, 1861 (after 1845 original)
File:Orestes Brownson by GPA Healy, 1863.jpg|Orestes A. Brownson, 1863
File:WHOportTyler.jpg|John Tyler, 1864
File:George Peter Alexander Healy - William T. Sherman - Google Art Project.jpg|William Tecumseh Sherman, 1866
File:MrsWilliamSherman.jpg|Eleanor Boyle Ewing Sherman, 1868
File:The Peacemakers 1868.jpg|The Peacemakers, 1868
File:Ulysses Simpson Grant by George Peter Alexander Healy.png|Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1868
File:George P.A. Healy - Abraham Lincoln - Google Art Project.jpg|Abraham Lincoln, 1869
File:G.P.A.Healy, Portrait of Pope Pius IX (1871).jpg|Pope Pius IX, 1871
File:Jennie Byrd Bryan (1874) by George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|Jennie Byrd Bryan Payne, 1874
File:Roxana Atwater Wentworth G-001718-20120802.jpg|Roxana Atwater Wentworth, 1876, National Gallery of Art
File:George Healy - Carol I.jpg|Carol I of Romania, 1881
File:Chester Alan Arthur by George Peter Alexander Healy.png|Chester Alan Arthur, 1884
File:Brooklyn Museum - Self-Portrait - George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|Self-Portrait, 1886
File:The Wetmore Boys by George Peter Alexander Healy.jpg|The Wetmore Boys
File:PortraitofBenjaminEdwards.jpg|Benjamin S. Edwards
File:Helen Edwards Portrait.jpg|Helen Edwards
File:NinianWirtEdwards.jpg|Ninian Wirt Edwards
File:ElizabethEdwards.tif|Elizabeth Todd Edwards
File:George Judd.tif|Judge George Judd
File:Lucy Judd.tif|Lucy Judd
</gallery>
See also
- Arch of Titus, 1871 painting by Healy and two others
References
Attribution: