Description: Anglo-American genre painter George Henry Boughton (1833-1905) signed this receipt for oil painting classes at the Albany Female Academy in 1858.

 

Boughton was born in England and immigrated to the United States in 1835 at two years old. He lived in Albany, New York and began his self-taught artistic career at a young age. By 19, he was a recognized landscape painter and had opened his own studio. He eventually moved back to England and opened a studio in London where Vincent van Gogh, then working as a minister, saw Boughton’s painting Godspeed! Pilgrims Setting Out for Canterbury, which inspired one of van Gogh’s sermons. The painting now belongs to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Boughton also illustrated Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow, as well as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poems.

 

Receipt measures: 3 3/8” x 7 ¾”. Item #A00982.

 

Condition: Fold lines and creases, some light foxing, otherwise in good condition with a neat, clear signature.