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.