Benjamin Champney (1817-1907) | White Mountain Art & Artists

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Benjamin Champney is synonymous with White Mountain landscape painting of the 19th century. Most art historians consider him the founder of the White Mountain Colony of painters who came to North Conway and the surrounding area during the second half of the 19th century. His paintings were often used to make chromolithographs that were subsequently sold to tourists who could not afford Champney’s originals.

Benjamin Champney was born in New Ipswich, NH on November 17, 1817. He was one of seven children and following the death of his father was sent to Lebanon, NH to live with an aunt and uncle. There, he attended local schools and as a 10-year-old boy worked in his uncle’s cotton factory. After four years in Lebanon, he returned to New Ipswich and continued his education at the Appleton Academy for an additional two years.

In 1834, Champney pursued an opportunity to apprentice in Henry Daggett’s shoe shop on Washington Street in Boston, MA. A career in shoe sales was, however, not in Champney’s future, who instead began training as a lithographer at Pendleton’s graphic shop. One of Pendleton’s artists, Robert Cooke, induced Champney to “drop shoe sales and take up art” and the young men quickly forged a friendship. On May 1,1841, at the urging of Washington Allston, the pair traveled to Paris to study painting.

In Paris, Champney met another young American artist, John Frederick Kensett, and together, they took a studio and later traveled to Italy and Switzerland. Champney had his pictures accepted at the Paris Salon for two years consecutively and began making copies of paintings at the Louvre Museum to sell. Champney returned to Boston in 1846 and then traveled to Europe almost at once to paint a panorama of the Rhine River. He returned to Boston in 1848 and exhibited the panorama there and in New York City (where the panorama was subsequently destroyed by fire in 1857).

Benjamin Champney first visited the Conway, NH area in 1838, and in 1850, he returned to the White Mountains with his friend John Frederick Kensett. Their enthusiasm and paintings drew large numbers of Boston and New York artists to the Conway area. Champney’s studio became a noted fixture within the resort community and was visited by people from all parts of the country. In 1853, Champney married Mary Caroline Brooks and purchased a house in North Conway, making this his summer home for over fifty years.

On August 4, 1888 The White Mountain Echo reported: “Champney’s studio is as much visited as ever this summer, and there are many new pictures to see. Of the landscapes, there is a view from the new carriage road up Humphrey’s Ledge that is beautiful, and another a scene in Crawford Notch, and still another, a picture of Mount Chocorua from Tamworth; there are some lovely new flower pieces … But perhaps the very prettiest is the old-fashioned pitcher in the kitchen window …”

Champney exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Art Club, the Newton Club, Jordan Galleries, Poland Spring Galleries, and the National Academy of Design. In 1855, Champney became a founder of the Boston Art Club and its president in 1856. In 1900 he published an autobiography, Sixty Years’ Memories of Art and Artists. He was also a member of the American Social Science Association.

Champney was the uncle of the artist Edwin Graves Champney.

On December 11, 1907, at the age of 90, Benjamin Champney died in his home at 40 Pleasant Street, Woburn, MA. He is buried at Woburn’s Woodbrook Cemetery.

Images of Benjamin Champney