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Many thanks to Peter Hayward who is the proud owner of the picture above. He also contributed the
following information about J. Ambrose Prichard.
J. Ambrose Prichard was born in Boston in 1858. He began his art studies at the Massachusetts Normal
Art School and in 1882 he went to Paris to further his training. He lived at 10 rue Croix-de-Petit
Champs in Paris. The artist remained in Paris for the next seven years studying at the Academie Julian
under the instruction of renowned painters Louis Boulanger, Jules Lefebvre, and Jean-Leon Gerome.
While abroad, Prichard exhibited his work at the Paris Salons of 1886 and 1887. About Prichard's
French paintings, a Parisian critic wrote that he "knows how to paint the moss covering the low parts
of roads, uneven pavements, the parasitic vegetation of old walls, the mysterious infinity of closed
gardens. He interprets with sentiment the peaceful country" Two years later, he returned to Boston and
established a studio at 175 Tremont Street, painting during the summers at Brewster, Annisquam, Quincy,
Duxbury, and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He was adept in both oil and watercolor, and his
landscapes were praised by critics as pictures that "tell a breezy story of a good time."
Prichard was a member of the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Water-Color Painters and
exhibited frequently at both institutions as well as at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art in 1892.
He exhibited at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in 1881, the Boston Art Club from
1881 until 1904.
Prichard's last large exhibition of watercolors and paintings was held At Beacon Galleries in Boston in
April and May of 1903. The exhibit consisted of 180 works that sold in only four days. In his review
of this show, a critic for the Boston Herald praised his work for its portrayal of the "cheerful
gladsome side of nature." He continues "Mr. Prichard makes this impression with remarkable skill,
seizing upon just the features of a scene that more particularly characterize its individuality."
Referring to the artist's predilection for a foreground gaily diversified with the wild flowers of
the late summer or autumn, the same writer says he succeeds in doing this work without producing an
impression of spottiness or of discordance in color, which is no mean tribute to his capacity for
chromatic synthesis. (Boston Herald, 1903).
He suffered a stroke while working in his studio on Tremont Street in February of 1905. He died in
Roxbury just four months after his marriage to Louise Heald.
References: See WWAA.; Obituary Boston Evening Transcript, February 6, 1905.
Last updated February 2009
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