George Hawley Hallowell was born in Boston and spent his professional life there. He attended Harvard to study drawing and art history under, among others, Charles Eliot Norton. He also attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Boston and studied there for three years with Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson.

Hallowell was known as a "Tarbellite" but his style and unusually ephemeral manner of fusing color hues and tones into blurry edged atmospheric landscapes was unique and because of this he is considered an avantgarde member of the Boston school.

Hallowell was a member of the St. Botolph Club (Boston), the Boston Society of Water Color Painters, the Aquarellists and the N.Y. Water Color Club. He painted as many watercolors as he did oils and is best known for his scenes of northern forests, logging camps and melancholy landscapes in American, Canada and Italy. He also made stained glass windows and altar pieces in glass, wood and metals.