Washington Allston (1779-1843)

• Was an American painter and poet.
• Allston was born in Waccamaw Parish, South Carolina.
• Washington Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina for a short time before sailing to England in May 1801.
• He was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in London in September, when painter Benjamin West was then the president.
• In 1818, he returned to the United States and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for twenty-five years.
• He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1826.
• He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom studied painting under him.
• The first American exhibition of Allston's work was in 1827 when twelve of his paintings were shown at the Boston Athenæum.
• In 1830 Allston married Martha Remington Dana, the sister of the novelist Richard Henry Dana.
• Dana was a cousin of Allston's first wife.
• In 1841, he published Monaldi, a romance illustrating Italian life, and in 1850, a volume of his Lectures on Art, and Poems.
• Allston died on July 9, 1843, at age 63. 
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