Henry Bacon | Orientalist painter

Henry A. Bacon (1839-1912) was an American painter, author, illustrator, and translator.

Before his formal training as an artist, he served as a soldier and war artist during the American Civil War, and was badly wounded in the Second Battle of Bull Run.

He then studied in France, and became a member of the Pont-Aven School, painting genre subjects of French country life, many sold back in America.

He first traveled to Egypt in 1897, and then developed an interest in Orientalist painting, soon spending his winters in the Middle East, dying in Cairo.

Henry A. Bacon was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1839.

During the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army on 16 July 1861 and acted as a field artist for Frank Leslie's Weekly while he served as a soldier within the 13th Massachusetts Infantry.

Badly wounded at Bull Run, he was discharged on 19 December 1862.

After the war, he studied art with Walter Gay, who suggested that he travel to Paris to undertake a formal art education.

In 1864, he went to Paris, with his first wife Elizabeth Lord, to study figure painting.

He was admitted to France's premiere 'National School of Fine Arts' and was one of Alexandre Cabanel's pupils.

Bacon traveled to Pont-Aven, a commune/village in the Finistère département, in Brittany and fell in love with Pont-Aven.

Back in Paris, he mentioned the place to his friends who were painters.

He is credited to have been the first American painter and among the first painters from a long group of painters to come to Pont-Aven including Paul Gauguin and advised and attracted fellow American, Robert Wylie to spend summers there (and Wylie is even buried in Pont-Aven).

This period is known nowadays as the Pont-Aven School.

Bacon exhibited at the Salon from 1868 through to 1896 with genre works which had found favour with the American market.

He also worked as a journalist sending reports of events in Paris to the Boston Daily Evening Transcript.

In 1897, he travelled to Egypt for the first time and began regularly spending winters there.

At that time, he switched from oils to watercolours which he believed was the optimal medium to capture the transparent light of the Middle East.

Bacon was the author of A Parisian Year (1882), which he also illustrated, and Parisian Art and Artists (1883).

He contributed illustrations to Our Houseboat on the Nile (1901) by Lee Bacon.

From 1890-1898, he translated from the French annual volumes about the Paris Salon with illustrations by Goupil and Cie.

Bacon died of a heart attack in Cairo, Egypt, in 1912.