This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  George Henry Story was a painter of portraits, landscape and genre and
curator and acting director of two major American museums, and an early
portraitist of President Abraham Lincoln.
While in Washington
for a period of time, Story had met the President, drawing him in
pencil. At a later date, Story again sketched Lincoln for three
days in the Oval office, preparing to paint a commissioned portrait of
the President. He actually painted several portraits of
Lincoln. Story wrote about this experience: "After each sitting,
I returned to my room and worked upon my picture with my sitter vividly
in mind, almost as though he were in my actual presence."
Story
was involved even further with Lincoln. He was responsible for
establishing the Presidential pose for Lincoln's first official
photograph in office.
Story held the posts of curator
concurrently at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. He was at
the Metropolitan from 1889-1906, and the Wadsworth, 1899-1922, when he
died. In 1904-1905, Story had been acting director at the Metropolitan.
Story was born in 1835 in New Haven, Connecticut, and his first
art experience was three years as an apprentice woodcarver as a youth
of fifteen. Then he had a year studying in Europe. Story
also had three years of the study of portrait painting with Louis Bail
and Charles Hines.
Back from Europe, he worked in a somewhat
unusual succession of citiesPortland, Maine, Washington, D. C. (when he
painted Lincoln), the island of Cuba and finally, New York City, where
he would ultimately die.
George Henry Story was a member of the
Artists' Fund Society and the National Academy of Design. His
work is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut; and Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and
Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Source:
Michael David Zellman, Three Hundred Years of American Art
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