George Henry Story

George Henry Story was a painter of portraits, landscape and genre and curator and acting director of two major American museums, and an early portraitist of President Abraham Lincoln.

While in Washington for a period of time, Story had met the President, drawing him in pencil.  At a later date, Story again sketched Lincoln for three days in the Oval office, preparing to paint a commissioned portrait of the President.  He actually painted several portraits of Lincoln.  Story wrote about this experience: “After each sitting, I returned to my room and worked upon my picture with my sitter vividly in mind, almost as though he were in my actual presence.”

Story was involved even further with Lincoln.  He was responsible for establishing the Presidential pose for Lincoln’s first official photograph in office.

Story held the posts of curator concurrently at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.  He was at the Metropolitan from 1889-1906, and the Wadsworth, 1899-1922, when he died. In 1904-1905, Story had been acting director at the Metropolitan.

Story was born in 1835 in New Haven, Connecticut, and his first art experience was three years as an apprentice woodcarver as a youth of fifteen.  Then he had a year studying in Europe.  Story also had three years of the study of portrait painting with Louis Bail and Charles Hines.

Back from Europe, he worked in a somewhat unusual succession of cities Portland, Maine, Washington, D. C. (when he painted Lincoln), the island of Cuba and finally, New York City, where he would ultimately die.

George Henry Story was a member of the Artists’ Fund Society and the National Academy of Design.  His work is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; and Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma.