Charles Henry Granger

Charles Henry Granger (June 13, 1812 – September 8, 1893) was an American itinerant painter who at various time was plus a poet, composer, musician, music teacher, sculptor and draftsman.

Granger studied for two-and-a-half years at West Point previously returning to Saco where he started teaching himself piano, drawing, and painting. In 1839, he married Mary Eaton (1811–1888) of Kennebunkport, a town close Saco. Only a few months later, Granger left his bride to embark upon a three-year vacation to seek additional instruction in painting and to establish log on with artists and clients. After brief stopovers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Newburyport and Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, Granger paid more lengthy visits to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Hagerstown, Maryland, and Washington. His travels are skillfully documented in his diaries and letters.

He usual some portrait commissions and other work, but furthermore had to earn pension through extra means, including leading a church choir, teaching art, tuning pianos, and leading a band. An inventory in the Martha Kettelle's biography: Aloft upon Butterflies' Wings: The Story of the Artist Charles Henry Granger and His Family" includes only not quite forty-one located works, whereas an account in one of Granger's sketchbooks states that with 1832 and 1845, he executed amid 187 and 250 oil paintings as skillfully as two sculptures, various poems, musical compositions, and therefore forth. Eventually, in 1842, the Grangers returned to Saco, although he continued to travel in search of produce an effect for several years before settling there for ever and a day in 1847.

In 1866, Granger helped found the York Institute afterward men from widely every other backgrounds, who shared an inclusion in the action of knowledge. Their pledge was that none of them should die in possession of an uncommunicated historical fact. The confirmed purpose of the direction was "to puff the assay of Natural History; encourage Science and Art; also to combination and preserve whatever relates to the Natural and Civic archives of York County." By the 1880s, the Institute could boast of members from across the United States, and corresponding members from whatever over the world, including Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

Around 1870, Granger was commissioned by the York Institute to paint a portrait of John James Audubon, which he copied after a painting by Henry Inman. He delivered papers at the Institute on such diverse subjects as ventriloquism and the destruction of forests. Granger continued to paint until late in his life, executing "flower pieces" and portraits which were often copied from daguerreotypes. He died in Saco on September 8, 1893, after a number of illnesses. Granger seldom signed and out of date his works. Only a small fragment of Granger's perform is known. Granger's works put in portraits of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John James Audubon, and a copy of the George Stuart portrait of General Henry Knox. The Smithsonian American Art Museum summative listings the Inventory of American Paintings Executed back 1914 enhance only three paintings by Granger: