John Williamson

Going to School
c. 1863
Oil on Canvas on Board
20 ½ x 16 ½

John Williamson (1826-1885)

John Williamson was a prominent member of the Hudson River School of American
landscape painters active during the mid-nineteenth century. A native of Glasgow,
Scotland, he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1831. Williamson spent
most of his life based in Brooklyn, NY. He studied art at the Brooklyn Institute and was a
founder of the Brooklyn Art Association. A prolific and highly acclaimed artist, he
exhibited regularly at all major American venues in the eastern U.S. He was a particularly frequent exhibitor at the National Academy of Design in New York, of which he was an Associate Member. Examples of his work are preserved today in the collections of many American museums including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hudson River Museum, the Florence Griswold Museum of Art, the Joslyn Museum and the Maier Museum of Art among others.

While primarily a landscape painter, Williamson’s works are often imbued with a particular charm by the inclusion of elements of genre painting. “Going to School” is a case in point. A boy stops for refreshment at a well. His hat, schoolbooks and lunch bucket lie by the side of the road. A companion gestures towards a pair of small girls approaching. This painting is possibly the same as a work bearing this title by Williamson exhibited in Chicago in 1876. (See Index to Early American Art Exhibition Catalogs.)

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