Frederic Porter Vinton was an American portrait painter.
Background
Frederic Porter Vinton was the son of William Henry and Sarah Ward (Goodhue) Vinton. He was born on January 29, 1846, at Bangor, Maine.
He was taken by his parents to Chicago when he was ten, and his education was begun in the public schools of that city. After five years the family returned to New England.
Education
Vinton entered the drawing class of the Lowell Institute, took anatomy lessons from Dr. William Rimmer, and drew from casts in the Atheneum gallery. In order to raise funds for European study, he then worked for ten years in two Boston banks, in the meanwhile contributing art criticisms to the Boston Advertiser.
In 1875, having laid up $1000, he went to Paris and entered the atelier of Leon Bonnat. The following year, he went to Munich with Frank Duveneck and studied for a year in the Academy there, but he did not care for Munich methods and returned to Paris to study for a time under Jean Paul Laurens.
Career
The boy obtained a place as clerk for the Boston firm of Gardner Brewer & Company, and was later employed by C. F. Hovey & Company until about 1864. By this time, he had fully determined to be a painter, his choice being confirmed by the sympathy and advice of William Morris Hunt. He was the only American in Laurens's studio. Here he painted his first Salon picture, "A Gypsy Girl, " now owned by the city of Lowell, Massachusetts.
In 1878, Vinton returned to Boston, took a studio in Winter Street, and painted the vigorous portrait of Thomas G. Appleton which was his first great success. Many sitters came to him and he was soon ranked among the foremost American portrait painters. For thirty-three years he was busily occupied in Boston, producing some three hundred portraits. He had for sitters such men as Charles Francis Adams, Wendell Phillips, Francis Parkman, Gen. Charles Devens, Senator George F. Hoar, William D. Howells, and others equally prominent.
Few portraits of men made by Americans are as fine as his best examples, such, for instance, as his "Dr. Samuel A. Green, " in the Groton (Massachusetts) Library. In 1882, he went to Spain with William M. Chase and made ten fine copies of the masterpieces of Velasquez in Madrid, which were exhibited in Boston and elsewhere on his return. He was occupying Hunt's old studio in Park Square, Boston, but in 1892, he bought a house in Newbury Street and constructed a pair of handsome and well-lighted studios on the top floor. There he lived and worked until his death on May 20, 1911.
Achievements
Views
Vinton believed that nothing but truth will endure, and in his practice he endeavored to live up to that difficult standard.
Membership
a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters
Personality
Vinton was a confirmed realist who ennobled his prose by his breadth of style and dignity.
Connections
In June 1883, Vinton married Annie M. Pierce of Newport, Rhode Island. He had no children.