George Henry Yewell

Bay of Naples with Vesuvius, Oil on Paper, George Henry Yewell, American, 1871

1871

oil painting on BFK paper, floated in white frame.

In 1852, twenty-nine year old William Bradford was a failing shopkeeper in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. With a wife and child at home, Bradford, by his own admission, “spent too much time in painting to succeed” in business. Rescued from insolvency by his well-to-do in-laws, this is not the beginning of a narrative that generally leads to a happy ending. Not so with Bradford, who ultimately found international fame and fortune as a painter of arctic seascapes and dramatic marine paintings. William Bradford, the artist, was a lineal descendant of the 17th-century Separatist leader William Bradford, a founder of the Plymouth Plantation, signer of the Mayflower Compact and Governor of the Plymouth Colony. Our Bradford born to a New Bedford ship outfitter in Fairhaven, Massachusetts By the nineteenth century, this line of Bradfords were Quakers, living on the tract purchased nearly two centuries earlier by their pilgrim ancestor. Fairhaven, across the mouth of the Acushnet River from the whaling center of New Bedford was described by a New York journalist in 1857 as “the Brooklyn of New Bedford” (Home Journal, January 3, 1857). Young Bradford displayed an early predilection for the arts, but his Quaker parents were disinclined to support this particular pursuit. After working in his father’s business and then for a dry goods merchant in New Bedford, by 1849 Bradford had set up in New Bedford as a “merchant tailor” offering outfits for “those going to California,” “seamen’s clothing,” custom-tailored “piece goods...

Medium: Oil on Paper Mounted to Board Signature: Signed Lower Right, Signed Again and Dated August of 1904 on Reverse The Rawhide Part III, 'He swung himself into the saddle and rode away.' Signed with initials M·P...

Medium: Oil on Paper

This oil painting on paper is what artist Ashley Eliza Williams calls a "restless object." Derived from field studies of lichen, each of the restless objects in this 2022 body of wor...

This oil painting on paper is what artist Ashley Eliza Williams calls a "restless being." Derived from field studies of lichen, each of the restless beings in this 2022 body of work ...