Background
Reynolds was born on the family farm in New Lenox, Illinois, the youngest of eight children, only three of whom survived childhood.
Reynolds was born on the family farm in New Lenox, Illinois, the youngest of eight children, only three of whom survived childhood.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Académie Julian, Royal College of Artist
He was an artistically gifted young man and overcame hardship in order to study art In 1885 he enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Design, which eventually became the Art Institute of Chicago which relied on the French Beaux-Arts curriculum. He was awarded first prize by the Antiques Department of the school in 1887 and a scholarship for the following term.
The couple had a boy named Ralph Reynolds.
Reynolds entered the Royal Academy in Munich and studied privately with an artist named Simon Hollosy. When Frances Reynolds became ill, the family returned to the Midwest where she died in 1889.
Reynolds met Virginia Richmond Keeney, a young Chicago miniature painter. The pair were married in Munich shortly before the two artists left for Paris to further their studies.
Wellington J. Reynolds studied at the Académie Julian where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant.
Reynolds passed the difficult concours for admittance to the Ecole de Beaux Arts, the official French national academy.