Frank Myers Boggs (1855-1926)

Mixing tonalist and impressionist elements, Frank Myers Boggs forged a novel artistic style at the juncture of fin-de-siècle American and European traditions. Born in Ohio, Boggs trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Léon Gerôme and spent the majority of his life in Paris. There, he accomplished the rare feat of gaining prominence in both the French and American art worlds. By the end of his life, Boggs had essentially transformed himself into a French impressionist: he became a French citizen in 1923 and earned the French Legion of Honor three years later. Over the course of his career, Boggs painted harbor views of Holland, England, and France in addition to his celebrated Parisian street scenes. His works demonstrate an acute sensitivity to atmosphere and light and a tendency toward damp surfaces—rain-flecked streets and foggy skies—that allow a greater range of reflective effects. This interest in delicate, fleeting impressions aligned Boggs with the leading impressionists of the day, including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Eugène Boudin, with whom he associated in Paris. Yet his subtle, tonal palette and consideration of volumetric form distinguish his work from impressionist convention. Several authors have suggested that Boggs’s sober palette derives from the influence of Johan Barthold Jongkind, a Dutch painter whose work served as a significant precursor to Impressionism. Like Boggs, Jongkind spent most of his life in Paris, where he influenced a young Monet. Boggs’s work is the link in the chain of influence running from Jongkind to Monet to the United States. His paintings exemplify the complex circuit of cultural interplay that affected American art at the turn of the century, when droves of American artists studied in Paris and cosmopolitan collectors acquired a growing taste for contemporary French art and its American interpretation. Boggs won a prize from the American Art Association in 1884 and silver medals from the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 and the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Museum Collections:
Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norkfolk, VA
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento CA
El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX
Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, CA
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN
Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages, Long Island, NY
Luxembourg Museum, Paris
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
Musées Nationaux, Paris
Musée Bernard d’Agesci, Niort
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL