Francis Golden (1916-2008):

Francis ("Frank") Golden was born in 1916 in Adams, Massachusetts and studied at Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston (graduated, 1939). In that year he traveled with a group of artists who had joined an artist's union. Golden settled in Chicago, moved to New York, then Connecticut and finally to Massachusetts.

Golden has spent his life painting en plein aire, creating outdoor paintings in watercolor that editors of various magazines quickly bought and used as illustrations. "I became known as an illustrator," he said in 1999, "but my work is not illustrative! I'm a painter who paints because he has to paint in order to stay sane!" Nevertheless, his watercolors became some of the most popu...