DEWITT CLINTON BOUTELLE

DeWitt Clinton Boutelle, namesake of then Governor of New York, DeWitt Clinton, was born on April 6, 1820 in Troy, New York. He was largely self-taught, though influenced by Thomas Cole and Asher Durand. Like these Hudson River School artists, he painted in the Hudson River Valley, where his subjects included Niagara Falls and the Catskill Mountains. Boutelle was such an admirer of Cole that to honor him he did a full-size copy of Cole’s painting Voyage of Life. Boutelle was painting both portraits and landscapes in New York City as early as 1846 and at that time was also exhibiting at the National Academy of Design. For the next thirteen years, he worked and traveled in the vicinities of New York City, Philadelphia, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1851 and became a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1862. He exhibited at the American Art Union, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Washington Art Association. After 1857 Boutelle settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he died on November 5, 1884. Boutelle’s work is represented in the collections of the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Sheldon Swope Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, and the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, among others.