Howard Russell Butler

Howard Russell Butler
Howard Russell Butler
Born	March 3, 1856 New York City
Died	May 20, 1934(1934-05-20) (aged 78) Princeton
Nationality	American
Occupation	Patent lawyer, artist, organiser
Known for	Painter and founder of the American Fine Arts Society.
Spouse(s)	Virginia Hays

Howard Russell Butler (March 3, 1856 – Princeton, NJ. May 20, 1934) was an American painter and founder of the American Fine Arts Society. Butler also persuaded Andrew Carnegie to fund the construction of Carnegie Lake near Princeton University. Butler also designed a mansion, an astronomy hall and painted a solar eclipse for the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Butler was born in New York City. He was the son of William Allen Butler, a lawyer and satirist. His early artistic training with William Shannon was complentented by visits to the National Academy of Design, where his parents were both fellows, and the studio of his uncle, William Stanley Haseltine.

Butler attended Princeton University and obtained a degree in Science in 1876 and he was invited to stay on for a year as an assistant professor of physics. From 1878 to 1879 he was doing technical illustrations in New York where he knew Thomas Edison. In 1881 he was able to graduate from Columbia University where he had studied law. Whilst he was at Princeton he was an active member of the rowing team despite there being poor facilities. Butler practiced patent law until 1884 when he decided to concentrate entirely on painting.

Butler reapplied himself studying under the elderly Frederic Edwin Church in Mexico before returning to study with J. Carroll Beckwith and George de Forest Brush at the Art Students League in New York. In 1885, he went to France for two years and lived in Paris, a member of the artistic American colony in Paris, and Concarneau.