George H. Yewell

George Henry Yewell was one of our oldest painters and the oldest member of the Academy of Design, whose meetings he attended as lately as last year, when he had reached the age of ninety-three and was nearly blind. He painted many portraits, but was known chiefly by his architectural subjects, exteriors and interiors, which he found and studied during his long sojourn in Italy and in the Orient. He was a man of many friends whom he charmed with his fine voice and his skill as violinist, and to whom he became endeared by his kindly humor and his genial disposition. A partial list of these friends—many of them intimates—reveals the character of Yewell as a man. For many years one of the American Colony in Rome, he counted among his friends Vedder, Colman [sic: Charles C. Coleman], Crowinshield [sic: Frederic Crowninshield], Butler and [Casimir] Griswold; later, in this city, he was the associate of Guy, Frank Millet, Brown, Whitridge [sic: Whittredge] and many other members of the Century’s artist group.

During forty years he spent his summers at his country home on Lake George; during thirty years, and until shortly before his death, his city headquarters were in the Old Studio Building on Tenth Street. Here, as in earlier years, he lived surrounded by friends although his older associates had gone, and in spite of his failing eyesight and his patriarchal age maintained not only his cheerful individuality but his interest in the world’s affairs.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1924 Century Association Yearbook