EATON, WYATT (baptized Charles Wyatt), painter, teacher, and author; b. 6 May 1849 in Philipsburg, Lower Canada, son of Jonathan Wyatt Eaton and Mary Smith; m. first 24 Sept. 1874 Constance Laure Papelard (d. 7 Feb. 1886); m. secondly 23 July 1887 Charlotte Amelia Collins; d. 7 June 1896 in Middletown, R.I., and was buried in Philipsburg. Wyatt Eaton’s parents were Americans who had settled and done well in Philipsburg. Jonathan Wyatt owned a lumber business, and a carriage factory that shipped to Montreal and exported to New Zealand, and he became president of the Missisquoi and Rouville Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Respected in the community, he served for a time as mayor of Philipsburg. After working as a craftsman’s apprentice in his father’s carriage works, young Eaton began painting and drawing on his own, often copying the few landscapes, portraits, and plaster casts that were available locally. He took several of his drawings to Montreal. On the advice of William Lewis Fraser, a tinter of photographs for William Notman, Eaton enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York in the fall of 1867. His instructors, most of whom painted portraits, included Emanuel Leutze, one of America’s foremost history painters. He also studied privately for 5 years with Joseph Oriel Eaton (no relation), a noted portrait specialist. Eaton returned to Philipsburg in the summer of 1868. He received portrait commissions from local patrons and painted rural landscapes and figure subjects. One client was John Carpenter Baker, a Stanbridge banker and patron of the arts, who also encouraged Eaton’s slightly older contemporary Allan Aaron Edson*; as with Edson, Carpenter provided the funds that, in 1872, enabled Eaton to study in Europe. He stayed briefly in London, where he admired the later landscapes of Turner and met the American expatriate painter Whistler. Moving on to Paris, he enrolled in October in classes at .... http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/eaton_wyatt_12E.html undefined

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