Thomas Hovenden (December 28, 1840 – August 14, 1895) was an Irish-born painter and teacher who spent most of his life in the United States. He painted historical works, domestic scenes and narrative subjects, some depicting African Americans.
Hovenden was born in Dunmanway, County Cork, Ireland. His parents died at the time of the Great Famine and he was placed in an orphanage at the age of six. Apprenticed to a carver and gilder, he studied at the Cork School of Design.
In 1863, he immigrated to the United States. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He moved to Baltimore in 1868 and then left for Paris in 1874. He studied at the ÃÂcole des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but spent most of his time with the American art colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany led by Robert Wylie, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry.
Returning to America in 1880, he became a member of the Society of American Artists and was elected an Associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1881 (elected an Academician in 1882).
He married Helen Corson in 1881, an artist he had met in Pont-Aven, and settled at her late parents' homestead in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. She came from a family of abolitionists, and their house had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. An addition to the barn was known as "Abolition Hall," and had been built to house anti-slavery lectures and meetings. Thomas Hovenden made Abolition Hall his studio.
Hovenden was commissioned by Mr. Robbins Battell of Norfolk, Connecticut, to paint a historical picture of the executed abolitionist leader John Brown. Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown (1884), is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He also painted a two-thirds replica, that is in the collection of the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Hovenden's Breaking Home Ties (1890), a picture of American family life, caused a sensation at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. It was engraved with considerable popular success.
In 1886, he was appointed Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, replacing Thomas Eakins who was dismissed due to his use of nude models. Among Hovenden's students were the sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder and the leader of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri.
Hovenden was killed in August 1895, along with a ten-year-old girl, by a railroad locomotive at an unguarded crossing near Plymouth Meeting. Newspaper accounts reported that his death was the result of a heroic effort to push the girl out of the path of the train. A coroner's inquest determined his death to have been an accident.
A Pennsylvania state historical marker in Plymouth Meeting interprets Abolition Hall and Hovenden. Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. He is buried across the street in the cemetery of the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse.
Hovenden taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. One of his students was Henry Ossawa Tanner, an African American who was possibly one of the first Black students to attend the school. Tanner would be famous for painting two images of African Americans, different for portraying them with dignity. These were The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor.
Among Hovenden's works was a series of portraits of two elderly African Americans. His images were different than many made by his contemporaries, because he showed the Black couple as having a sense of dignity, rather than being caricatures. However, he has also been accused of portraying African Americans from a superior point-of-view, the images showing people content in their poverty.