James Carroll Beckwith

James Carroll Beckwith (September 23, 1852 - October 24, 1917) was an American landscape, portrait and genre painter whose Impressionist style led to his recognition in the late nineteenth century as a prominent figure in American art.

Carroll Beckwith, as he preferred to be known, was born in Hannibal, Missouri on September 23, 1852, the son of N. M. Beckwith, who was United States Commissioner-General at the Paris Exposition of 1867. However, he grew up in Chicago where his father started a wholesale grocery business. In 1868 aged 16 he studied art at the Chicago Academy of Design under Walter Shirlaw until the great fire of 1871 destroyed eveything (including much of the heart of the city). He then went to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design (of which he afterwards became a member) in New York City under Lemuel Wilmarth and later traveled on to Paris, staying there from November 1873 until 1878.

James Carroll Beckwith died of a heart attack in his apartment at the Hotel Schuyler on West Forty-fifth Street in New York City on October 24, 1917 aged sixty-six after having taken a taxi cab ride with his wife in Central Park.

His papers, including his sketchbooks and the diaries he kept from 1871 until his death in 1917 are held by the National Academy of Design in New York City.