John Joseph Enneking was born in Minster, Auglaize County, Ohio, the son of Joseph and Margaretha (Bramlage) Enneking. His father, a farmer of German descent, disapproved of his son’s artistic inclinations and once thrashed him for an ambitious sketch on the freshly painted barn of the homestead.
John Joseph Enneking was educated at Mount St Mary's College, Cincinnati, studied art in New York and Boston, and gave it up because his eyes were weak, only to return to it after failing in the manufacture of tinware. In 1873-1876 he studied in Munich under Schleich and Leier, and in Paris under Daubigny and Bonnat; and in 1878-1879 he studied in Paris again and sketched in Holland.
John Joseph Enneking served in the American Civil War in 1861- 1862.
In 1873 he began three years of European art study, chiefly at Paris, under D’Aubigny and at the school of Maître Bonnât where he mastered the grammar of art. Returning to America, he established his home in Hyde Park, but revisited Europe in 1878 for another year of sketching and study in Paris and Holland. He finally opened a studio in Boston, devoting himself thenceforth, for the rest of his life, to landscape and figure painting.
Although most prominent as a landscapist, he could paint a masterly portrait, one of his best examples being that of F. B. Sanborn of Concord.
John Joseph Enneking was a famous impressionist, who belonged to the Boston School. The Enneking Parkway in Hyde Park, Massachusetts is named after Enneking.
John Joseph Enneking was a romanticist, intolerant of academic restrictions, an impressionist, luminist, and tonalist whose work expressed emotional freedom and idealism.
John Joseph Enneking was married to Mary E. Elliott of Corinna, Maine.
