Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, an industrial city about ten miles north of Boston, Charles Woodbury remains among the most influential artists to work in Ogunquit, Maine and in Boston. He taught more than 4,000 students including ones at Wellesley College, had more than 100 solo exhibitions, and wrote three widely read art education books. He remains a strong influence on art education.

Woodbury was from a comfortable, well-established family. He sold his first oil painting when he was 15 and at age 17 in 1884, was the youngest person ever elected to the Boston Art Club. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and credited Ross Turner, his watercolor instructor, as launching his painting career.

As a young resident painter of Lynn, he was a leader among his artist colleagues in the formal application of paint in beach and marsh scenes, a unique subject for that time. Immediately after graduating from MIT, he set up a studio at 22 School Street in Boston near Charles Green, his close friend and painting colleague. They determined to make a living only from their painting, and they succeeded.

His formal art training began in 1890 when he, a newly married man, enrolled in the Academie Julian in Paris and stayed for a year. Returning to the Boston area, he became a prominent plein-air painter and living until 1940 embraced Impressionism.