Dwight Blaney 1865-1944

Painter, collector, naturalist and lover of old songs, Dwight Blaney was a Renaissance man in the truest sense. Attracted to painting as a young boy, Blaney received his earliest artistic training employed at a tombstone maker's shop, where he was eventually promoted to chief designer. He went on to work as a draftsman at an architectural firm in Boston for several years before retiring at an early age to paint and collect full-time. Blaney's need for paid employment ended when he married an heiress, Edith Hill, the daughter of the owner of the Eastern Steamship Company.

Initially, Blaney began to collect antiques to furnish his and Edith's home. But, as his eye developed, his appreciation of antiques grew - as did his passion for acquisition. Blaney soon developed into one of Boston's premier collectors. He eventually filled his double house on Beacon Hill in Boston, his farmhouse in Weston, Massachusetts and his Greek-revival home on Ironbound, an island off the coast of Maine with his antique treasures.

Always a gracious and entertaining host, Blaney counted among his friends many of Boston's socially and artistically elite, including John Leslie Breck, Childe Hassam, William Paxton and John Singer Sargent. Blaney's painter friends certainly saw and commented on his paintings, undoubtedly influencing his stylistic development to some degree. Blaney had been recruited to the ranks of the Impressionists early in his career, after having been exposed to the new aesthetic during his earliest European travels in the 1890s. However, his close relations with many of America's most inspired Impressionist artists certainly must have influenced (or at least reinforced) his artistic sensibility.

Blaney's en plein air landscapes of New England were exhibited during his lifetime in such Boston venues as the Doll and Richards Gallery, the Guild of Boston Artists and the St. Botolph Club.