George Fuller

Painter, born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, USA. He worked in Boston (1842–7) and New York (1847–59) as an itinerant painter, studied at the National Academy, New York (1847), travelled in Europe (1859), and returned to work the family tobacco farm in Deerfield. There he painted visionary landscapes and figure studies, such as ‘Winifred Dysart’ (1881).

Having attained some proficiency he went about the country painting portraits, settling at length in Boston, where he studied the works of the earlier Americans, Stuart, Copley and Allston. After three years in that city, and twelve in New York, where in 1857 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, he went to Europe for a brief visit and for study. During all this time his work had received little recognition and practically no financial encouragement, and on his return he settled on the family farm at Deerfield, where he continued to work in his own way with no thought of the outside world.

He sent some pictures to a dealer in Boston, where he met with immediate success, financial and artistic, and for the remaining eight years of his life he never lacked patrons. Among his noteworthy canvases are: The Turkey Pasture, Winifred Dysart, The Gatherer of Simples and The Quadroon.