Thomas Doughty (1795-1856)

Landscape painter and lithographer Thomas Doughty was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1793. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who could only make a living off of portraiture, Doughty was one of the first American artists to devote himself entirely to landscape painting. He first worked as an apprentice to a leather merchant in Philadelphia, where he lived and studied until 1832. Shortly thereafter, he won much critical acclaim for his landscapes of the rivers and mountains of Pennsylvania, the Hudson River Valley and New England. His landscapes are distinctive for their “quietness”, usually showing a solitary figure, sailboat or cottage. Doughty had a prolific career for an artist of his time, exhibiting frequently and selling much of his art. Among his exhibitions were the Boston Athenaeum, the American Academy, the Paris Salon of 1847, the Brooklyn Artists’ Association of 1861, and the National Academy of Design, of which he was made an honorary member in 1827. Doughty was one of the first artists to reproduce his paintings as lithographs in a popular series Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports, a monthly he published with his brother in Philadelphia. Doughty died in New York City in 1856.