biography of George FULLER (1822-1884)

Birth place: Deerfield, MA

Death place: Brookline, MA

Addresses: Boston; NYC

Profession: Portrait, landscape, and figure painter

Studied: Carolyn Negus (his aunt) in Boston, early 1840's; Boston AA; sculpture with Henry Kirk Brown, Albany, NY, 1842-47; NAD, late 1840s.

Exhibited: American Art-Union; Boston Athenaeum; NAD, 1868-91; Boston AC, 1878-84; PAFA, 1878, 1883; AIC, 1888 (posthumous), 1939 (posthumous)

Member: ANA, 1854.

Work: Corcoran Gallery; Smith College; BMFA; Phillips College.

Comments: After his first solo exhibition in Boston in 1875, he won acclaim for his moody and nostalgic portraits and figures-in-landscape, inspired by Corot and the French Barbizon painters. He first took up painting in 1841, after accompanying his deaf-mute younger half-brother, Augustus Fuller (see entry), on a painting tour through western New York. George returned to Boston in 1842 and worked there for six years (sharing a portrait studio with his cousin Jonas Holland Howe for some of those years). From 1847-59, he studied in NYC and painted portraits in Philadelphia and some southern cities (Montgomery and Mobile, AL). In 1860 he went to Europe for six months where he met many of the masters and studied with them. On his return in 1861, he took over the family farm at Deerfield and for fifteen years, concentrated on farming, although he is known to have painted the surrounding landscape. In 1875, he resumed his professional artistic career when his Boston show found great success. He contnued to produce moody figural works and landscapes in brown tones, with textured, painterly surfaces. His sons, Spencer and Henry B. were also artists.

Sources: G&W; Millet, ed., George Fuller, biographical sketch by William Dean Howells; DAB; Downies, George Fuller's Pictures"; Sherman, "Four Figure Pictures by George Fuller"; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Cowdrey, NAD; Swan, BA; Thieme-Becker; Champlin and Perkins; Fine Arts Journal (1914), 91 ff. More recently, see Baigell, Dictionary; Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 1:78 and 2: 81; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 194; Sarah Burns, "The Life and Poetic Vision of George Fuller" Am. Art Journal v.13, no.4, Autumn, 1981; Naylor, NAD;Falk, Exh. Record Series.