Henry Golden Dearth (22 April 1864 – 27 March 1918) was a distinguished American painter who studied in Paris and continued to spend his summers in France painting in the Normandy region. He would return to New York in winter, and became known for his moody paintings of the Long Island area. Around 1912, Dearth changed his artistic style, and began to include portrait and still life pieces as well as his paintings of rock pools created mainly in Brittany. A winner of several career medals and the Webb prize in 1893, Dearth died suddenly in 1918 aged 53 and was survived by a wife and daughter. Early life Born on April 22, 1864 in Bristol, Rhode Island, Henry Golden Dearth was the youngest of five children of John Willis and Ruth Marshall Dearth. His father was connected with the whaling business and was an artillery officer during the civil war. He was also a talented musician and provided favorable influences to the development of Henry's talent. His grandfather was a commander in the United States Navy during the War of 1812. At the age of 15, his family moved to Waterbury, Connecticut, where he entered the employ of Brown & Brothers, and was afterward for a time connected with the Waterbury Clock company. Dearth's passionate love for art led him to eventually devote himself solely to the study of painting. He entered the studio of portrait painter Horace Johnson for three months before he went to Paris and studied in the atelier of Ernest Hébert and Aimé Morot at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. Returning to the United States in 1888, Dearth established himself with a debut exhibition of landscape at the National Academy of Design. In 1889 he exhibited for the first time with the more progressive Society of American Artists. In 1893 he was awarded the Webb prize for works by an artist under the age of 40. In 1902 he opened his studio at 18 E. 40th Street in New York and started to return to spend his summers in Normandy, the region that first attracted him to landscape painting. He had a house and studio at Montreuil-sur-Mer, in the Pas-de-Calais, on the English Channel coast, where he worked several months each season. He married Cornelia Van Rensselaer Vail, the younger sister of Anna Murray Vail, on 26 February 1896 and they had one daughter Nina Van