Hovenden was born in Dunmanway, Co. Cork, Ireland in 1840. His father, Robert Hovenden, keeper of the bridewell at Dunmanway, was of English descent; his mother's maiden name was Ellen Bryan. Both parents died when he was six, and he was placed in the Cork orphanage.
At fourteen he was apprenticed to a "carver and gilder" of Cork with whom he served a seven years' apprenticeship. His master, recognizing the boy's talent for drawing, sent him to the Cork School of Design. Coming to America in 1863, Hovenden continued his training in New York at the School of the National Academy of Design. In 1874 he went to Paris for further study, remaining for six years and entering the École des Beaux-Arts, where he worked under Cabanel.
Once more in America, he had a studio in New York for a time but came to be more permanently associated with Philadelphia, where he taught in the school of the Pennsylvania Academy. In his teaching, as in his own painting, Hovenden remained the man formed by the academic school of France. The fineness and warmth of his personality, however, united with a conscientious effort to help his pupils, caused him to be greatly respected by them. Among their number, one may recall the name of Robert Henri. He met his death while trying to save a little girl who was in front of a railroad train near Norristown, Pa.
Hovenden was represented almost yearly at the exhibitions of the National Academy of Design and had a number of pictures shown at the Paris Salon. Among his best-known works are: "The Last Moments of John Brown" and "Jerusalem the Golden" (both in the Metropolitan Museum, New York), "Breaking Home Ties, " "The Image-Seller, Brittany, " "Bringing Home the Bride, " "Elaine, " and "The Harbor Bar Is Moaning. "
Numerous studies of negro life show his interest in the colored people of the land of his adoption, and his deep sympathy with their story and that of one of their champions gives to his picture of John Brown its very genuine interest as illustration. It is the faithful pictorial presentation of John Greenleaf Whittier's famous verse on the death of the hero of Harper's Ferry, and its sentiment has touched the imagination of thousands. Although a wider understanding of the old masters and of the men who continue their art in modern times has at present discredited literary pictures such as Hovenden painted, his patient study gives value to his work as a historical record of the manners and appearances of his time. He is typical of the sincere toilers of a school based on nineteenth-century photographic realism. The sentiment which he offered as a substitute for the craft of the painter was genuine and could well be appreciated by a public unaware of the slender artistic basis of the work.
Hovenden was elected to the National Academy in 1882.
In 1881 he married a talented young American artist, Helen Corson; their daughter, Martha Hovenden, became a painter of merit.
