He was born on December 13, 1846 at "Levinworth Manor, " near Upperville, Virginia, United States, an estate granted in 1770 by the British Crown to Powell's ancestors who emigrated to America from Wales. He was the son of John Levin and Maria Louise (Grady) Powell.
At the conclusion of the Civil War he went to Philadelphia to study art and became a pupil of Thomas Moran. The dominant influences in the development of his art were the teaching of Moran and the works of Turner.
At seventeen, in spite of a slight lameness occasioned by an accident in boyhood, he entered the Confederate army. When he was about thirty years of age, he made a trip to Europe, visited the great galleries, studied especially the works of Turner, but did not enroll in any school or study under any individual master. It was fifteen years before he visited Europe again, by which time his reputation was established. Powell painted both in oil and in water color, producing in the former many large and imposing canvases, but in the latter medium, his works, fresh and spirited, more truly reflected his inherent gift.
In 1910 he and his wife made a trip to the Holy Land, stopping in Egypt and Italy on the way. From this trip Powell brought back an interesting series of water colors; picturesque, colorful, and spontaneous. His career was powerfully influenced by the friendship and patronage of Mrs. John B. Henderson, wife of Senator Henderson of Missouri - a woman of wealth and public spirit - who, admiring his work and believing him to be a great genius, fitted a studio for him in her palatial home in Washington and subsidized him for years. She is said to have owned, at the time of his death, more than two hundred examples of Powell's paintings.
During the last twenty or more years of his life he maintained his own studio independently, and divided his time between his homes in Washington and in Loudoun County, Virginia. His works were exhibited from time to time in the Corcoran Gallery of Art and at the National Gallery of Art. Two of his large canvases, one of the Canyon of the Colorado and the other a marine, "Mid-Ocean, " long hung on the walls of the Carnegie Public Library of Washington.
His death occurred in Washington, District of Columbia, after an illness of less than a month.
Lucien Whiting Powell will be longest remembered by his paintings of the Grand Canyon, rendered somewhat in the style of Moran, but with less accuracy. He was equally well known during his life time, however, for his paintings of Venice - dream pictures full of light and color. He was one of the first to hold an exhibition on an ocean steamer. Although he cannot be considered a great artist, his paintings were exceedingly popular and found their way through purchase into private collections in all parts of the world.
He was a member of the Society of Washington Artists and the Washington Water Color Club.
Powell lived to be eighty-four years of age, but he never had robust health and was inclined to pessimism, apparently finding less pleasure than others in the practice of his profession. He was proud of his successes, however, and was generous to a fault, giving away many of his paintings to his friends, and contributing money with a free hand to those less fortunate than himself.
Powell married Nan Fitzhugh in 1880. He had a son and two daughters.
