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Abel Bowen (1790-1850) was an
engraver, publisher, and author in early 19th-century
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
.
Biography
Bowen was born in New York in 1790. Arriving in Boston in 1812, he worked as a printer for the
Columbian Museum, at the time under the proprietorship of his uncle, Daniel Bowen. In 1814 Abel married Eliza Healey of Hudson, New York. Their children included Abel Bowen (d.1818).
With
W.S. Pendleton he formed the firm of Pendleton & Bowen, which ended in 1826. He joined the
Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association
The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (est.1795) of Boston, Massachusetts, was "formed for the sole purposes of promoting the mechanic arts and extending the practice of benevolence." Founders included Paul Revere, Jonathan Hunnewell, a ...
in 1828. In the 1830s Bowen and others formed the Boston Bewick Company, which published the ''
American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge
The ''American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge'' (1834–1837) was a monthly magazine based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established by a group of engravers to "give to the public a work descriptive, not merely of subjects, scen ...
''. He lived and worked in Congress Square, ca.1823-1826; in 1832 he kept his shop on Water Street, and lived on Union Street; in 1849 he worked on School Street, and lived in Chelsea.
Bowen taught Joseph Andrews,
Hammatt Billings
Charles Howland Hammatt Billings (1818–1874) was an artist and architect from Boston, Massachusetts.
Among his works are the original illustrations for ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (both the initial printing
and an expanded 1853 edition),
the Nat ...
,
George Loring Brown
George Loring Brown (February 2, 1814 – June 25, 1889) was an American landscape painter. He was born in Boston and first studied wood engraving under Alonzo Hartwell and worked as an illustrator. He studied painting with Washington Allston, ...
, B.F. Childs,
William Croome,
Nathaniel Dearborn, G. Thomas Devereaux,
Alonzo Hartwell
Alonzo Hartwell (19 February 1805 in Littleton, Massachusetts – 17 January 1873 in Waltham, Massachusetts) was an engraver and portrait artist in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. He trained with Abel Bowen in BostonW. J. Linton. The ...
,
Samuel Smith Kilburn Samuel Smith Kilburn (18311903) was an engraver in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. He trained with Abel Bowen. Kilburn's work appeared in popular periodicals such as Gleason's Pictorial. His business partners included Richard P. Mallo ...
, and Richard P. Mallory. Contemporaries included
William Hoogland
William Hoogland (c.1794–1832) was an engraver in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York in the early 19th-century. "Career obscure; but was a designer and engraver of banknotes in New York in 1815." In Boston, contemporaries included Abel Bowen, ...
.
His siblings included publisher Henry Bowen.
Works by Bowen
*
* Engraved by Abel Bowen.
Bowen's Boston News-letter, and City Record 1826.
''Early Impressions''A novella published 1827, Bowles and Dearborn: Boston, and reprinted by Allen and Ticknor, Boston, 1833.
*
**
**
* Young Ladies' Book. 1830.
Images
Image:NavalMonument byAbelBowen 1838.png, The Wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
Boarding the Frolic. Bowen's ''The Naval Monument'', 1816
Image:AbelBowen BostonDirectory 1823.png, Office at Congress-Square; advertisement in ''Boston Directory'', 1823
Image:ExchangeCoffeeHouse Snow HistoryOfBoston 1828.png, Engraving by Bowen of the Exchange Coffee House from Snow's ''History of Boston'', 1828
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
* WorldCat
Bowen, Abel 1790-1850Young Ladies' Book excerpts. 1830.
American paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Bowen (no. 74)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowen, Abel
1790 births
1850 deaths
American engravers
Artists from Boston
19th-century American people
19th century in Boston