page_title: Howard Russell Butler
section_title: Art and leadership
hierarchical_section_title: Howard Russell Butler / Biography / Art and leadership
context_page_description: Howard Russell Butler was an American painter and founder of the American Fine Arts Society. Butler persuaded Andrew Carnegie to fund the construction of Carnegie Lake near Princeton University, supervised the construction of the Carnegie Mansion, designed an astronomy hall, and painted a solar eclipse for the U.S. Naval Observatory.
context_section_description: Butler reapplied himself studying under Frederic Edwin Church, who was wintering in Mexico for his health, in January 1884 before returning to study with J. Carroll Beckwith and George de Forest Brush at the Art Students League in New York. In 1885, he went to France for two years and lived in Paris, a member of the artistic American colony in Paris, and Concarneau.
  In 1889 Butler was able to find the capital to build the Fine Arts building at 215 West 57th Avenue. This building was to be the home of the Art Students League, the Society of American Artists, the Architectural League of New York and the newly formed American Fine Arts Society which Butler led for its first 17 years. Whilst raising these funds he first met Andrew Carnegie who employed him for ten years as president of the Carnegie Music Hall Company allowing him time off each day to paint. Butler married his wife Virginia Hays in 1890.
  By 1899 he was a National Academician of the National Academy of Design and a member of the Architectural League and the Society of American Artists.
caption: Carnegie Lake
exif: {}