Edwin Tryon Billings
American, 1824-1893
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Edwin Tryon Billings was a portrait painter in 19th-century United States. He lived in Montgomery, Alabama; Worcester, Massachusetts; and in Boston. Among his numerous portrait subjects were Daniel Webster, William Lloyd Garrison and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Billings was born November 20, 1824, to wheelwright Ira Billings and Eunice Tryon of Massachusetts. He lived in Montgomery, Alabama, intermittently c. 1850-1859; and in Worcester, Massachusetts, c. 1854-1856. He "first visited Worcester in 1854. Billings painted several important Worcester residents, including John Davis and Stephen Salisbury. His work hung in many public buildings including the Worcester County Courthouse and Mechanics Hall."
He moved to Boston in the 1860s, working in the Studio Building on Tremont Street c. 1864-1891. In the 1874 exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association Billings showed several paintings, including "Child and Kitten," and "Children and Rabbits." His work also appeared in the 1887 National Academy of Design exhibit.
Billings married Frances E. Keller in 1867. Friends included painter George Fuller, with whom he travelled in the southern United States. Among Billings' possessions was a copy of Walt Whitman's Two Rivulets, annotated by Whitman, and notably auctioned for a relatively high sum in 1909.
