Richard Caton Woodville

The life of Richard Caton Woodville (1825–1855) was remarkably brief; his entire artistic production was confined to just ten years. During this short period, however, he distinguished himself by producing sharply observed genre images with shrewd political and social subtexts. Born into a well-connected Baltimore family, he was the son of a prominent banker and merchant. He failed to distinguish himself in school; in fact, there is evidence that he spent his student years sketching his instructors and friends rather than studying. After just one year of medical school at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, he gave up formal instruction, preferring to spend time with friends who were likewise artistically inclined. [1]

In 1845, Woodville burst onto the scene when his painting, Two Figures at a Stove (private collection), was accepted for exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Although it lacked the finesse of his later paintings, the piece typified Woodville’s subject matter in its depiction of two low-life figures occupying a shadowy interior. That same year, Woodville married. His family disapproved of the match, and the young couple soon departed for Europe. Woodville’s destination was Düsseldorf, the site of the most prestigious art academy in Germany. The academy attracted a number of young American art students, including Emmanuel Leutze, Albert Bierstadt, and Eastman Johnson. In Düsseldorf, Woodville encountered not only genre art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but contemporary examples created by his instructors and fellow students. This exposure solidified his interest in scenes of complex narratives set in detailed interiors. Perhaps surprisingly, Woodville continued to set his subjects in America, even though he lived as an expatriate for most of his short career.

Although he was formally enrolled in the academy in Düsseldorf for just one year, he continued to live and paint in the city until 1851. He hit upon a formula for commercial success: he sent paintings home to his father, who, despite his initial disapproval of his son’s vocation, agreed to act as his agent. In 1847, Woodville sent home The Card Players (1846, The Detroit Institute of Arts), which his father sold to the American Art-Union. The Art-Union commissioned an engraving of the work and distributed it to its members, immediately elevating Woodville’s fame and reputation. He sold Politics in an Oyster House (1848, The Walters Art Museum) to the prominent Baltimore lawyer John H.B. Latrobe, son of the architect Benjamin Latrobe. His relationship with the American Art-Union continued to prove beneficial, as he sold both War News from Mexico (1848, The Manoogian Foundation, on loan to The National Gallery of Art) and Old ’76 and Young ’48 (1849, The Walters Art Museum) to that institution. Both paintings demonstrated Woodville’s keen interest in the political situation back home.

Despite his professional successes, Woodville’s personal life began to disintegrate in the late 1840s. Shortly after the birth of his daughter in 1849, he left his wife for a fellow student at the Academy, Antoinette Schnitzler, and embarked upon a particularly restless period of travel and relocation. He moved to Paris, made several trips to London, journeyed back to the United States, and eventually landed to London. During this unsettled period, however, he continued to be productive. He painted Waiting for the Stage (The Corcoran Gallery of Art) in 1851 and The Sailor’s Wedding (The Walters Art Museum) in 1853. Rather than depicting political subjects, these paintings are wry observations of social interactions.

Woodville’s life and career were cut short when he died of a presumed accidental overdose of morphine in London in 1855. During an artistic career that lasted just a decade, he managed to achieve both critical and commercial success and produced such complex and layered images that, even today, his work continues to reveal new truths to the viewer.

Notes:

[1] See Justin P. Wolff, Richard Caton Woodville: American Painter, Artful Dodger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).