James Wells Champney, a distant cousin of landscapist Benjamin Champney, was born in 1843 in Boston, Massachusetts. A well-known artist-teacher, he is best known as a specialist in rustic genre scenes, using a broad, painterly, and rather informal approach to his works. He also painted many portraits and landscapes, and stylistically was "one of the first Americans to grasp and utilize the spirit of impressionism." (397)

As a young man he took drawing classes at Lowell Institute and studied anatomy under Oliver Wendell Holmes. At sixteen years of age, he was an apprentice to a wood engraver*, but terminated the relationship to serve in the Civil War in 1862. He contracted malaria and was discharged from the militar...