Charles Chapin

Born in Massachusetts, Charles Henry Chapin (1830–1889) was an American artist who worked as an illustrator, art teacher, and painter of portraits and landscapes in oil and gouache/watercolor. Though mostly known as a Hudson River School artist regularly depicting the Adirondack Mountains, Chapin continuously moved all over the country looking for different subjects. He had studios in Boston, New York, St. Augustine, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He was also noted for his portrait of Polish actress Helena Modjeska, dressed for her role as Mary Queen of Scots. Many of his illustrations of Civil War scenes were published in "Harper's Weekly" in 1864. He was a founder of the Lotos Club in New York City in 1870.

He headed west to California and was in San Francisco from 1876 to 1877 and exhibited with the San Francisco Art Association. Having gone back to New York for some time, he would later move south in 1882 taking up a primary residence in New Orleans where he advertised as a painter of portraits and landscapes as well as a teacher. He established his studio on Dryades Street and exhibited at W.E. Seebold's art gallery. During his time in New Orleans through 1885, he made several winter trips to Florida. He traveled all across its state from St. Augustine, along the central and southern Gulf coast, and as far south as the Everglades.

Chapin lived his final years back in New York before what appears to have been an unfortunate accident. During a routine painting trip in upstate New York in December of 1888, Chapin mysteriously disappeared. Three months later in March of 1889, his body was found in the North River within the Adirondack Mountains. Chapin's work is within the permanent collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz, among others.

Submitted by Graves International Art