James Goodwyn Clonney

James Goodwyn Clonney painted small genre scenes of American country life: fishing parties, farmers, children and people gathered to hear the news. His pictures often carry gentle social or political comment, and some show white and Black Americans side by side as equals.

He was born in 1812, probably in Liverpool, and began as a lithographer and miniature painter in New York and Philadelphia. He studied at the National Academy of Design in 1833 and exhibited there until 1852. His early painting Militia Training was first titled Fourth of July but renamed after complaints about its drunken figures. He later lived in Cooperstown, Peekskill, New Rochelle and Binghamton, where he died in 1867.

In Fishing Party on Long Island Sound off New Rochelle, look at the relaxed poses and small human details.