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Henry Chapman Ford

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Artist's Biography

Henry Chapman Ford studied art in Europe as a young man, then returned to the United States to participate in the Civil War.  He moved to Chicago in the 1860s, becoming the leading painter of that growing city and a founder of the Chicago Academy of Design.  The preferred subjects for his Illinois landscapes were forest interiors where poetic and mysterious effects of light and shadow could be exploited.  Ford moved to Santa Barbara in 1875 to escape the cold climate of the middle west.  He immediately resumed his career as a landscape painter, painting the rugged mountains near Santa Barbara, and traveling to other scenic areas in California.  In 1878, he took a three-month-long excursion by horse-drawn wagons to Yosemite, accompanied by his wife with their pet owl, his student, the artist Mary Stevens Fish and such dignitaries as Eliza [Mrs. Harrison Gray] Otis, wife of the publisher of the Santa Barbara Press and the Los Angeles Times.  Eliza’s letters from that trip tell of much outdoor camping and hiking.  Our painting captures a mellow twilight mood as warm sunset tones are reflected off the cliffs.  A sense of Yosemite as the Garden of Eden is suggested by the peaceful doe and buck in the foreground. Ford had a long and distinguished career as a painter and civic leader in Santa Barbara and is best known today for his paintings of the California missions, done in the 1880s.