This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  James Goodwyn Clonney was a genre and miniature painter born in Liverpool, England in 1812. He came to America as a young man and worked as a lithographic draftsman, possibly in Philadelphia as early as 1830. He attended the National Academy of Design in New York City, and by 1834, was an established miniaturist there. He continued his affiliation with the Academy, exhibiting there frequently as well as at the Apollo Association, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the American Art Union.
He can be said to have turned primarily to genre about 1841, though his painting, "In the Woodshed," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, dates from as early as 1838. During those years, his home was New Rochelle, New York.
Preferring rural subjects, perhaps in emulation of William Sidney Mount, Clonney also painted domestic interior scenes of men discussing politics or the latest news, as in "Mexican News, 1847, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Ithaca, New York. His most ambitious painting, however, "Militia Training," 1841, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, contains over thirty individuals.
Preferring to model his figures simply and to keep interior and exterior scenes free of clutter, he invested his paintings with a clean and unpretentious quality. Usually, the scenes are mildly amusing, and were presumably painted as a kind of visual entertainment.
Clonney died in 1867.
Source:
Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art"
Groce and Wallace, "Dictionary of Artists in America"
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