This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Portraitist Edwin Child was born in Gouverneur, New York. He succeeded several painters in the family, the most notable being Sarah Goodridge, a miniaturist and friend of Gilbert Stuart. Edwin and his brother were sons of a Baptist minister. They aroused comment by going to New York as artists, Edwin as a painter and his brother as a musician.
Child grew up in the fishing village of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and graduated from Amherst College, where he was captain of the track team. He spent two years as a guide, philosopher, and friend in art to the students, without classes.
Chase constantly drew and painted from nature from early boyhood. His first instruction took place during a college vacation under Margaret C. Whiting of Deerfield, Michigan. By doing charcoal portrait drawings and selling occasional landscapes, he graduated free from debt. After college, he studied at the Art Students League, later becoming chief assistant to John La Farge in mural painting. Then, magazine illustrations, with little writing, allowed him free time for landscapes, for which he won a St. Louis Exposition medal, and some figure painting.
Child later devoted his painting to portraits with the exception of the works he did in landscape at his summer home, "Two Barns," located in Dorset, Vermont. His best portraits are of men of intellectual character, showing his keen understanding of mental habit and its expression in poise and manner. He was remarkable for live expression.
At Columbia University, he painted professors George F. Canfield, Francis M. Burdick, and Dean W. A. Keener; at New York University has painted Dean Francis H. Stoddard, "as his best friends know him." At Amherst he painted professors Benjamin K. Emerson, Elijah P. Harris, Edward P. Crowell, and Dr. William Hayes Ward. He also painted the portraits of Harry Smith, president of the Hartford Life Insurance Company; John P. Branch of Richmond, and Professor Eben Jenks Loomis of Washington, D. C. The Brooklyn Museum has his portrait of Robert W. Paterson.
(Information on the biography above is based on writings from the book, "Contemporary American Portrait Painters", Illustrating and Describing the Work of Fifty Living Painters, by Cuthbert Lee.)
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