Franck Howland 1840-1868

Born in the United States in 1840, Frank Howland left his native country in 1858, at the age of only eighteen, to settle in Paris with the ceramicist John Gardner Low and the painter Charles Caryl Colman. There, he trained in the studios of Thomas Couture and Constant Troyon. He remained in the French capital for nearly six years, acquiring a solid academic training combined with a naturalistic sensibility that would leave a lasting mark on his work.

As early as 1861, his talent gained recognition in the United States when he exhibited three paintings at the Thirty-Sixth Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1865, one of his works was shown by New York’s Old Düsseldorf Gallery alongside paintings by leading American artists such as John Francis Cropsey and George Henry Yewell, confirming his early acclaim. He subsequently participated in the Annual Spring Exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1866 and again in 1868.

His premature death later that same year, at the age of only twenty-eight, brought to an abrupt end a career that had seemed destined for a brilliant future. Although he soon fell into obscurity, interest in his work was revived in December 1909, when a major retrospective was devoted to him at the Watson Gallery in New York, earning considerable critical praise.