Robert Wilton Lockwood, known as Wilton Lockwood, was born on September 12, 1861 at Wilton, Connecticut, United States, a town for which he was named by his parents, John Lewis and Emily Waldon (Middlebrook) Lockwood. He was descended from Robert Lockwood who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1630 and ultimately settled in Fairfield, Connecticut. His mother died in 1865 and the father removed the household to New York, but the boy showed distaste for city life and was sent to the home of his aunts at Rowayton, Connecticut.
Education
He received formal education. His ability to draw attracted some attention and led to his introduction to John La Farge, at whose studio he had instruction. He also attended classes at the Art Students' League of New York, whence he went to Paris to draw at Julian's under Benjamin Constant. He returned to New York, painted several portraits, and, with the money thus earned, resumed his studies at Munich, a city which Frank Duveneck had made popular with American art students.
Career
Lockwood started his employment in a New York broker's office. After his art studies he lived for several years at Paris where his style matured and his personality, that of a tall, rufous American, of courteous bearing and sharp repartee, made him a marked figure among artists. A group of his portraits at the New Salon in 1895 won special encomia. Returning to the United States in 1896 the Lockwoods settled in Boston. Whether this was a wise choice of location for an artist of Lockwood's talent and temperament is debatable. Working quietly at his Boylston Street studio in the winter, and in the summer at South Orleans, Cape Cod, he lived a life outwardly uneventful but always actively creative. His portraiture was penetrating, searching, and psychologically profound, some of his likenesses being almost uncanny in revealing a personality.
Among his notable sitters were John La Farge, the canvas now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Grover Cleveland, for Princeton University; Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, for the Massachusetts Bar Association; President Francis A. Walker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for the St. Botolph Club; and Otto Roth, violinist.
Lockwood's flower paintings grew out of his enthusiastic gardening. His paintings were exquisitely subtle and still quite objective apparitions of the choicest blooms at his Cape Cod home. They were painted against a thinly toned background, usually on the reverse side of a primed canvas. Some of these are owned by the Metropolitan and Worcester Art museums, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.
After the artist's death, the St. Botolph Club, Boston, held a memorial exhibition of his works. The catalogue's foreword, by a brother painter, acclaimed him as "one of the ablest artists Boston has ever had--perhaps the most subtle and sensitive. "
Achievements
Lockwood was famous portrait and flower painter. His portrait of Otto Roth was awarded the Temple Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1898. Other portraits won for Lockwood silver medals at Paris in 1900, Buffalo in 1901, and St. Louis in 1904. Robert was also nationally known peony grower and he won several prizes for his flowers.
Membership
He was a member of both the Society of American Artists and the Copley Society in Boston.
Connections
Lockwood married at London, England, in 1892, Ethel Whiton of Boston.
