Thomas Waterman Wood

Thomas Waterman Wood's father, John Wood, came to Montpelier from Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1814. The Wood family was of Puritan descent, and it was from Lebanon that John Wood, the father of the artist, married his wife Mary Waterman.

John Wood and his brother Cyrus were partners in a cabinet making business, the partnership concluding with the death of Cyrus in 1840. John's other brother, Zenas, lived to be 84 years of age. John Wood was the captain of an artillery company and for a long time, a deacon in the First Congregational Church.

When fortune permitted, Wood went to Boston and studied for a short time in the studio of Chester Harding, a portrait painter. In 1850 he married Miss Minerva Robinson, then living in Waterbury, Vermont, and in the same year he built a summer home in the Carpenter Gothic style on the west side of the mountain gorge through which the road leads up to Northfield. He named this home after his wife, making use of the Latin synonym, Athenwood.

During the 1850s, he found means of visiting galleries in London, Paris, Rome and Florence, having previously painted portraits in Canada, Washington and Baltimore. His first European visit, in 1858, was shared with Mrs. Wood. Upon their return he painted portraits in Nashville and Louisville, beginning at the former place The Fiddler, which was completed years afterwards and finally included in the Thomas W. Wood Collection in the Montpelier gallery.

At the age of 43, the artist permanently settled himself in New York City, opening a studio as a figure painter. This was in 1866, eight years after the exhibition of his first work in the National Academy of Design, The Baltimore Newsvendor (1858). This painting was sold by mistake to two persons, Mr. J. C. Brune of Baltimore and Mr. Robert L. Stuart of New York, resulting in a long, expensive lawsuit, terminated in favor of Mr. Brune.

During his residence in Louisville, Wood painted The Contraband, Recruit and Veteran, suggested by the sight of a black man in light brown jeans, who had but one leg and was hobbling along on home-made crutches. This celebrated work commemorates the transition of the African American from slavery to freedom and is now the property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1869, Wood was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design and, in 1871, an Academician. He became President of the American Water Color Society in 1878 and served in that office until 1887. He acted as vice-president of the National Academy of Design for a period of twelve years beginning in 1879. In 1891 he became the President of the academy. He died in New York City and was buried at Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier.^[1]

Art

In 1891, Wood exhibited at the academy a picture entitled A Cogitation, for which one of his Montpelier friends, Mr. George Ripley, posed. The composition is extremely simple, a farmer in his barn, leaning upon his pitchfork, his countenance thoughtful. This picture was bought by Mr. Harper and published as a full-page engraving in Harper's Weekly during the Greeley campaign over the title "Is Greeley a Fool or a Knave?".

Legacy and Collections

Wood maintained a lifelong connection to his hometown of Montpelier, Vermont, where he established the T.W. Wood Gallery of Art in 1895. His works are held in several public institutions throughout the state, with a significant collection of his portraiture housed in the Cedar Creek Reception Room of the Vermont State House. This collection, maintained by the Vermont Historical Society, includes portraits of U.S. Senator Samuel Prentiss (1881), Dr. Edward Lamb (1895), and the journalist Eliakim Persons Walton (1896).

Wood's donations to local institutions further documented the prominent figures of his era. These include his 1874 portrait of the Reverend William A. Lord of the Bethany Congregational Church and an 1880 depiction of novelist Daniel Pierce Thompson, author of The Green Mountain Boys. He also produced a portrait of U.S. Senator Justin Smith Morrill, the primary architect of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. These works are recognized for their historical value in documenting the political and social leadership of 19th-century Vermont.