George Henry Yewell

George Henry Yewell (January 20, 1830 – September 26, 1923) was an American painter and etcher.

Yewell was born in Havre de Grace, Maryland. His father died when he was a boy, and he and his mother left Maryland for Cincinnati, as she had family there; in that city he received some instruction from Theodore S. Parvin, who later became a prominent educator in Iowa. In 1841 mother and son moved again, to Iowa City, Iowa, where other members of their extended family lived. In 1848 Yewell apprenticed himself to a tailor to learn a trade, but at the same time he began showing an interest in art; a formative experience early in life was his encounter with a suite of prints based upon the cycle The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole. His breakthrough came with a political cartoon he drew about the controversy surrounding the move of the state capital from Iowa City to Des Moines. He later described the incident:

At the height of the excitement, I drew a large caricature, representing the Capitol building on wheels, and oxen pulling one way, upon whose shoulders were placed heads of members who voted for removal. On the other end of the building were those members who voted against the bill, represented by oxen whose feeble chain had broken and tumbled them in a heap. Principal leaders of the movement were represented as drivers; bodies of different animals, suited to their different characters, being in place of their own. The likenesses were easily recognized and the caricature created a sensation. It went from town to town over the state and made me widely known.

Among those who took notice of the young artist was Charles Mason, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Iowa. He collected a group of associates and together they financed the young man's move to New York City for the formal study of art. Charles Anderson Dana provided him with a letter of introduction to Thomas Hicks, whose pupil he became, and in whose studio he met William Makepeace Thackeray. He then enrolled in the school of the National Academy of Design, which he attended from 1851 until 1853.

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