James Perry Wilson

J.P. Wilson studied at Columbia University and earned a B.A. and B. AR. In 1913, Phi Betta Kappa. He was an excellent draftsman, designer and artist for Bertram Goodhue from 1914-1924 and for Mayers, Murray and Phillips through 1932. He attended the National Academy in New York City and studied there under John Carlson until 1932. He became an artist for the American Museum of Natural History (1924-1942), earning a living while most artists were starving or working for the WPA during the Great Depression. From 1942-1957 he was the Museum’s Staff Associate Artist. He completed many murals, including landscapes with animals for the Peabody Museum of New Haven, CT and the Boston Museum of Science, the Litchfield, Connecticut Museum of Nature Center, the Royal Museum of Ottawa, the Hayden Planetarium and several in Paris, France. His last one-man show was in 1979 at the New Britain Museum in Connecticut, 1979. In 1974, a one-man show of his landscapes (which usually are small in size because they were done on location) was rave-reviewed at the Alaska State Museum. Wilson was commissioned to paint for Life magazine for “The World We Live In” in the 1950s and from 1965-76 he was an artist-in-residence at Boston’s Museum of Science. He lived predominantly in Boston, Monhegan Island, Booth Bay Harbor, Newark, NJ, Washington, DC and in Litchfield, CT. His finely painted land and seascapes are softened-edged impressionism based in realism.