THOMAS BUFORD METEYARD PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY

THOMAS BUFORD METEYARD

American, 1865–1928

BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Buford Meteyard was born in Rock Island, Illinois, but following his father’s early death in 1868, the future artist’s widowed mother, Marion Lunt Meteyard moved with him to Chicago - she herself was an educator, poet, musician, and historian, and as her son matured, she introduced him to Chicago’s cultural life: lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and theatrical performances. When Meteyard was sixteen, he and his mother moved to native Massachusetts where, in Boston, Cambridge, and particularly at Scituate, she had relatives, some of whom were also writers and poets. Meteyard studied for a brief time at Harvard and, while there and later, met a number of emerging artists and poets, some of whom, notably the poets Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey, became life-long friends.

In 1888, with his mother’s support and companionship, Meteyard followed the great late-nineteenth-century artistic migration to Europe, first to London and then, in 1889, to Paris. There, Meteyard entered the atelier of the master academic painter Léon Bonnat (1833-1922), while also studing with Alfred Phillippe Roll (1846-1919) and Auguste-Joseph Delecluse (1855-1928). Meteyard continued to travel, to England, Ireland, and throughout the continent, and in the early 1890s, joined the international artists’ colony at Giverny, just north of Paris. Like so many other artists, including the Americans Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933), Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933), and John Leslie Breck (1859-1899), Meteyard was attracted to Giverny by its natural beauty and by the presence there of Claude Monet (1840-1926). Predictably, Meteyard was influenced by the Impressionists and, like them, took a keen interest in the aesthetics of Asian art. But he also developed talents in the graphic arts and was associated with the Symbolists, such as the poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Meteyard flourished in Europe’s bohemian milieu and was one of the first Americans to have his work included in the early Post-Impressionist exhibitions.

Meteyard returned to the United States in 1893, settling again in Massachusetts. He spent most of the next sixteen years there, at Scituate, with frequent trips to Boston and elsewhere. Throughout, he remained a prolific and versatile painter, equally adept at oil, watercolor, and woodcut. He was active as an illustrator and designer during these years, notably for the Arts-and-Crafts periodicals The Knight Errant and Mahogany Tree, both of which were published in Boston.

In 1906, Meteyard returned to England, a move that, following his marriage in 1910 to English-born Isabel Barber, became permanent. By that time, Meteyard’s work was being widely recognized. His work was included in exhibitions of the American Water Color Society and the Society of American Artists in New York; at the Boston Art Club and the Copley Society in Boston; and in the art galleries of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He had important solo exhibitions at Doll & Richards Gallery in Boston, Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, and West’s Gallery and The Fine Art Society in London.

Museum/Public Collections:
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX
The Boston Athenæum, Boston, MA
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, NH
Harvard College Library, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Imperial War Museum, London
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
Musée d'Art Américain, Givrent
Musée Municipal, Vernon
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TX
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Stark Museum of Art, Orange, TX
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL
Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
John H. Vanderpoel Art Association, Chicago, IL
Witte Museum, San Antonio, TX