Alfred Cornelius Howland
1838–1909 · American painter of genre, landscape and portraits
Alfred Cornelius Howland (Walpole, New Hampshire, 12 February 1838 – Pasadena, California, 17 March 1909) was an American painter best known for genre scenes, landscapes and portraits. His training combined practical work in the American print trades with several years of study and travel in Europe.
As a young man he worked as an engraver in Boston and as a lithographer in New York. From 1859 he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany, first under Andreas Müller and then under Albert Flamm, until 1862. He spent the following years in Paris, where he worked alongside the Barbizon School painters Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau.
Howland returned to America in 1865 and worked in New York and in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He was a member of the National Academy of Design and served on its council from 1880 to 1884. His works are held by many American museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery.