William Lamb Picknell


William Lamb Picknell was an American painter of landscapes, coastal views, and figure genres, known for his rapid painting style. He was born in Hinesburg, Vermont and died in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Life and career

Born in Hinesburg, Vermont, William was the son of Ellen Maria Upham and the Reverend William Lamb Picknell, a Baptist minister, both of New England families. William had a younger brother named George W. Picknell, who was born in 1864. In July 1868, the summer following his father's death, the Picknell family moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts.
He began his career by working in a frame shop while living with relatives in Boston, where he took lessons from George Loring Brown. In 1872, he travelled to Europe where he trained with George Inness in Rome and Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris, and also received some informal training from Robert Wylie in Brittany. Inspired by the gardens and artist colonies at Pont-Aven and Concarneau, Picknell and friend Hugh Bolton Jones founded a similar botanical artist's colony called "Squam" at Annisquam, Massachusetts on the leeward side of Cape Ann. The colony was thriving in the 1890s with Emil Carlsen and Robert Vonnoh in residence.
Throughout the 1880s, he lived primarily in Waltham, Massachusetts, but frequently travelled abroad, spending two winters in England and also visiting other parts of the US, including Florida and California. He married Gertrude Powers in 1889 and the couple had one child. He was living at Moret-sur-Loing, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, for most of the 1890s, but often spent the winters in the south of France. He returned to Massachusetts in 1897 following the death of his only child. He died of heart failure in Marblehead on August 8, 1897.
A memorial exhibition of his life work was held the next year in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1900, Fifth Avenue Art Galleries sold 60 of his paintings for a total of $16,595, approx. $620,000 in 2024. In 2006, his "Vue de Provence" sold at Sotheby's for $45,000, and other works routinely sell for over $20,000.

Notable works

The Road to Concarneau 1880, Corcoran GalleryLobster Fisherman 1882Lande de Kerran, Finistere 1877Morning on the Loing at Moret c. 1895, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Honors