Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Doolittle, Edwin Stafford

DOOLITTLE, Edwin Stafford, artist, b. in Albany, N. Y., in 1843; d. about 1880. He studied painting under John A. Hows in 1865, and in the studio of William Hart for a short time in 1866. In 1867 he opened a studio in New York, but in 1868 went to Europe. He studied art for some time in Rome, till failing health forced him to return to the United States. In 1869 he painted his "Shadow of a Great Rock in a Weary Land," of which he made several copies. In the summer of 1872 he studied under Jasper F. Cropsey, at Warwick, N. Y. His paintings comprise landscapes and marine subjects, and include "Sunset on an Adirondack Swamp"; "Chimney Rock, North Carolina"; "Gray's Peak, Colorado"; "A Pool in the Warwick Woodlands"; "Ruins of the Claudian Aqueduct on the Roman Campagna"; "On the Giuadecca Canal, Venice"; "The Arch of Titus"; "Autumn in the Catskill Clove"; "The Oxenstrasse. Lake Lucerne"; "The Old Toll-Gate"; and "Sunset on Schroon Lake." Mr. Doolittle also designed book-covers, decorated churches, and executed illuminations, the latter including "The Soliloquy of Friar Pacificus," for the Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia, which was afterward presented to the poet Longfellow, and of "A Prayer to the Virgin," now in the convent of the Sacred Heart at Savannah, Ga. He was the author of "Grace Church Chimes," and other poems.