PILGRIMS GOING TO CHURCH
by George Henry Boughton
1833-1905
George Henry Boughton
was born in England and his parents took him
to America when he was a baby. When he grew
up, he became a painter and sold his first painting when he was 19
years old. He took the money and visited London. Then he went back to
America for a couple of years. He decided to study in Paris for a
while, but eventually
made London his home. He established an art studio there in 1861 and
began to concentrate his work on early American Colonial history.
His paintings of two pilgrims going to Canterbury inspired Van Gogh's
first sermon. Van Gogh admired his work very much.
He liked to paint landscapes and also pictures of people. In this
painting that we are studying, he shows a group of
Pilgrims walking to church. It is winter time and there is snow on the
ground.
Why do you think the men are carrying
guns? Life was very hard for these early settlers, and many of them
died because of the extreme conditions.
Boughton also was an illustrator of books. He drew the
pictures for Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter
and Washington Irving's books Rip Van Winkle and The
History of New York.
He wrote a book called Sketching Rambles in Holland in
1885.