About James Sword

  • Biography

    After a childhood in Macao, China, James Brade Sword started out in life, after high school in Philadelphia, employed by a civil engineer on various surveys and earth-moving projects. In his early twenties, after sketching in his spare time, he soon turned to the study of painting.

    He began with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1861. By 1863, he had studied with George W. Nicholson, a landscape painter, and was deeply involved in painting. His earlier engineering projects had included the survey of Atchafalaya Bay in Louisiana; enlarging the Union Canal and digging a railroad tunnel, both in Pennsylvania.

    Sword was born in 1839 in Philadelphia. It would remain his home base, though he painted in va...

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