George Henry Yewell

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After his period of study, Yewell returned to Iowa City and painted portraits, specializing in depictions of children. By January 1856 he was back in New York and reenrolled at the academy; he took a studio in the city at this time as well. That July he went to Paris, again supported by Mason and his friends; until 1861 he studied there with Thomas Couture and counting among his acquaintances fellow students Henry A. Loop and Thomas Satterwhite Noble. A copy which he made of a painting by Rosa Bonheur during this time won him much acclaim from his fellow artists. In 1862 Yewell was in Iowa again, taking studio space in Des Moines, but by that spring he was back in New York, with a studio in the Dodsworth Building, when he submitted five works to the annual exhibition of the National Academy. At least three of the pieces in question were genre scenes dating to his French sojourn. Yewell never returned to Iowa to live, though he visited regularly, and married a local woman, Mary Elizabeth (Mollie) Coast, in 1863. With his wife and her brother Oscar he returned to Europe in 1867, and took up residence in Rome; he spent summers in Perugia and Venice and traveled to Egypt in 1875, and returned to the United States in 1878. Among his friends in Rome were Elihu Vedder, Charles C. Coleman, and Bayard Taylor. It is suspected that Yewell returned to the United States due to the behavior of his wife, who had shocked the American expatriate community in Rome; the couple were divorced the next year, and she married the English painter Edwin Ellis.

Yewell maintained deep ties with his patrons from Iowa, and earned many portrait commissions from them; even so, upon his return to America settled in New York City, where the chances of finding work were better. He rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which he kept at least until 1880. He returned there after taking space elsewhere in the city, coming back around 1895 and remaining there for the rest of his life. He worked mainly as a portraitist, but also created paintings from sketches he had made during his international travels. In 1881 he was reported to be designing a frieze for the Veterans Room in the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, a task he undertook for Louis Comfort Tiffany. Yewell spent his summers in Lake George. Elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1862, and made a full member in 1880, he contributed to exhibitions there beginning in 1852; apart from 1872 to 1876 his works were rarely absent from the yearly shows. He seems to have wished to be known as a genre painter, as he sent few portraits until the 1880s. Later he submitted depictions of the interiors of European buildings, especially churches. He continued showing at the academy until 1916. Yewell died in New York, and was remembered with a lengthy tribute entered into the minutes of the Academy Council, a practice which had ceased some time before. At his death he was the academy's oldest living member. He also occupied a number of positions within New York society; he was a Patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a member of the Century Club, and for many years secretary of the Artists' Fund Society of the City of New York.

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