Frederic Porter Vinton: Study Abroad

"Portrait with Yellow Shawl and Fan"
by Frederic Porter Vinton

"Frederic Porter Vinton was bent upon going abroad to study, and with this end in mind practiced the closest and most patient economy. He exchanged commerce for banking in order to have some hours of daylight free for drawing, and was for five years each in the National Bank of Redemption and the Massachusetts National Bank. 

During this time he was associated more and more closely with artists, and eagerly absorbed whatever aesthetic nourishment came in his way. He began also to contribute art criticisms to the Boston papers, and the excitement and discussion which in 1875 followed his outspoken notice of a Studio Building exhibition led to his appointment as regular art critic for the 'Boston Advertiser.'

In the autumn of this year he felt justified in cutting loose from the desk of a clerk and devoting himself to art study. He went to Paris, and by his friend Edwin H. Blashfield was presented to Bonnat, in whose popular atelier he was at once enrolled as a pupil. In the following June, however, Frank Duveneck, who had come to Paris to attend the opening of the Salon, induced him to continue his studies in Munich. Bonnat, although he did not approve of the change, gave the young man a letter, which was never used, to Piloty. Mr. Vinton was received into Piloty's studio, but he did not take kindly to German methods, and after a year of work in Munich he returned to Paris, in, as he says, 'a happy frame of mind.'

In the Salon of this year, 1877, Jean Paul Laurens exhibited his 'Death of Marceau,' and received for it the 'medaille d'honneur.' The picture so impressed Mr. Vinton that he at once went to call upon Laurens, and asked that he might be received into his newly opened atelier. In this studio he was the only American, and although he has recorded that Americans were not wanted there, his relations with the master and with the clever young French painters by whom he was surrounded were most cordial. Here he painted his first Salon picture, 'Une Bohémienne,' which was afterward presented by Mr. Thomas G. Appleton to the city of Lowell, Massachusetts." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Frederic Porter Vinton" by Arlo Bates on behalf of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1911.)