International studio (51.1913/1914)

An American Marine Painter: F. J. IFaugh

AN AMERICAN MARINE PAINTER:
/\ FREDERICK J. WAUGH. BY
Ik A. SEATON SCHMIDT.
Theodore Child once said: “Puvis de Chavannes
is a thinker who paints, Cazin may be described as
a painter who thinks.” The latter description can
be applied to Frederick Waugh, who is not only a
painter of exceptional merit, but a translator and
interpreter of nature.
Born in 1863, he became an artist by inheritance,
his father being at that time one of our most noted
portrait-painters, while his mother was a miniaturist
of much talent. As a youth he was shy and
sensitive, a dreamer of dreams and a seer of
visions; few of his young comrades could appre-
ciate his ambitions, while his elders considered a
boy hopeless who disliked school and preferred
to roam the woods, to study nature at first hand
rather than from books. At that time there was

little promise of the mature artist. To quote his
own words : “ As a boy I preferred natural history
and mechanics, but especially the ‘out of doors’
which I loved above all things. I was a regular
boy’s boy, and did not come into the region of art
nor assimilate its atmosphere until I was about
nineteen. I had been very much indulged as a
youngster, being allowed to have pretty much my
own way, and I fear that I caused my fond family
a good deal of anxiety, as I had a bad habit of
absenting myself in the woods for hours at a time,
and returning with pockets and cap filled with
snakes. I loved fishing, boating, tramping, and all
kinds of boyish adventure.”
At the age of nineteen he entered the Philadelphia
Academy of Fine Arts, where he met Eugenie Barr,
an artist of much promise. She at once recognised
his ability and encouraged him in his work, and
when, later, she became his wife and realised more
perfectly his great gifts, she gladly renounced her

BY FREDERICK J. WAUGH
273


“AFTERNOON IN HARBOUR COVE, GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS”