Warren Sheppard (1858-1937)

Marine painter, illustrator, and writer Warren Sheppard was born in Greenwich, New Jersey in 1858. Sheppard studied painting with Mauritz De Haas in New York, and in Europe, producing well-received canal scenes of Venice. Sheppard was also a designer and navigator of racing yachts who sailed widely along the New England coast,and actually won the famous New York-to-Bermuda race. He authored and illustrated the books, “Practical Navigation” and “A Tale of the Sea”.

A New York Times article of 1910 describes Sheppard as one of America’s best-known marine painters, whose canvases may be seen in this country’s larger private collections, and as one of the best amateur marine navigators in the world.

Sheppard lived in Brooklyn and summered in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, and on the Isles of Shoals, off New Hampshire. He exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association from 1874 to 1881; the National Academy of Design in New York from 1880 to 1899; the Denver Exposition in 1884, where he won a gold medal; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904; and the Pennsylvania Academy. He died in 1937. His work can be viewed today at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo; the Toledo Art Museum; the Public Library in Springfield, Massachusetts; the India House in New York; the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut; and the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.