Frederic Crowninshield (1845–1918) was an American artist and author.
Life
Crowninshield was born in Boston on November 27, 1845, into the Crowninshield family.
His father was Edward Augustus Crowninshield (1817–1859) and mother was Caroline Maria Welch (1820–1897).
He had two older brothers: Francis W. Crowninshield was born in 1843, and died from wounds in the American Civil War in 1866. Brother Edward Augustus Crowninshield was born in 1841 and died a year later.
After his father died his mother married Howard Payson Arnold in 1869.
Crowninshield graduated at Harvard College in 1866, and studied abroad 11 years; under Thomas Leeson Rowbotham in London, Thomas Couture in Italy, and Alexandre Cabanel in Paris. From 1879 to 1885 he taught at the Museum of Fine Arts School of Drawing and Painting when it was housed in the basement of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in Copley Square.
Crowninshield then moved to New York, where he was the first president of the National Society of Mural Painters a position that he held from 1895 to 1899.
, and president of the Fine Arts Federation from 1900 to 1909. In 1911 he was appointed director of the American Academy in Rome.
