Edwin Austin Abbey was essentially the last in the line of American artists-including Benjamin West, Mather Brown, John Singleton Copley, and Washington Allston-who went to England to pursue history painting and worked their way up the professional ladder to receive the highest honors at the English court. The path he took, however, was distinctly different from his artistic forebears.

Abbey didn't start to paint in oil until he was 40 years of age. Before that time, he had distinguished himself as an illustrator, becoming one of that field's most celebrated talents at a time when the publishing industry and its use of commercial illustration rapidly ascended to prominence. Born in Philadelphia, Abbey first studied art at the age of...