Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow


Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow was an American artist in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York. He was the son of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Biography

Ernest Longfellow was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised at Craigie House. He was the second of six children, including his younger sister Alice Mary Longfellow. Educated at Harvard College, he passed the winter of 1865 and '66 in Paris in work and study, and the summers of 1876 and '77 in Villiers-le-Bel under Couture. He married Harriet "Hattie" Spelman in 1868. An 1874 newspaper gossiped about him: "Ernest Longfellow, the son of the poet, is described as a slender, delicate young man, an artist of talent, great at ten-pins, and tip-top at gunning."
"His professional life has been spent in Boston, with frequent visits to Europe." In the 1870s he kept a studio on West Street. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1871 and 1875; the Williams & Everett gallery in Boston in 1875; the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia; and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the St. Botolph Club in 1880. He belonged to the Boston Art Club. He moved to New York around the turn of the century.
He died in November 1921 at the Hotel Touraine in Boston. "The funeral was held from the Craigie House;... services conducted by the Rev. Samuel A. Eliot." Longfellow bequeathed some 55 paintings from his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including works by Jacopo Bassano, John Constable, Thomas Couture, Luca Giordano, and others.

Works by E.W. Longfellow