Robert Cutler Hinckley (1853-1941)
Portraitist, of 1623 16th Street NW, Washington D.C., & Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and was the first American pupil to study art after the war at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, under Léon Bonnat, Durand, Cabanal and Yvon. He was a contemporary and colleague of John Singer Sargent. After his marriage in 1885, he lived at the home (see images) he commissioned in Washington D.C. designed by Fuller & Wheeler in 1886. He worked at the Corcoran Art Gallery in D.C. as a portrait artist, completing at least 350 portraits of notable Americans (such as President Ulysses S. Grant, Louis McLane, John Alsop King, etc.) and some of his pictures are in the collections of the National Gallery, the Capitol, and West Point. His most famous work (see images) is "The First Operation Under Ether," a large historical painting depicting the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846. This established his reputation and is considered a masterpiece of American historical painting. He was a member of several prestigious art organizations and exhibited regularly at major venues. In 1910, estranged from his wife, he gave up painting and moved to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he spent much of the rest of his life. In 1885, he married Eleanora O'Donnell and they were the parents of three children.
