About the artist:

Edward Pritchard was born in December 1864 in Wales, and came to the US around 1871. He married an Irish immigrant named Helen (maiden name unknown) in 1886. Helen bore a daughter, Ethel, in 1887. In 1900, the family lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey. By 1910 they were living in Orange, New Jersey. By 1920, the family, including the already widowed daughter Ethel, lived in Brooklyn, and still lived at that address in 1930, where Pritchard continued to be active as an artist. Edward Pritchard died sometime in the 1930s; the exact date of death is not known. As a side line, he may have also given music lessons. Edward Pritchard worked in oil and in watercolor. His paintings are invariably signed E. Pritchard, in a consistent script with only very minor variations. Although he painted an occasional still life, he appears to have painted mainly landscapes and maritime scenes, with a large ship at sail a recurrent theme. If one of his paintings contains a human figure, it would be exceptionally rare. At least one, and possibly more, of his maritime paintings was reproduced by a Chicago company and sold as prints. Many of the American Edward Pritchard's paintings, probably more than one hundred, have been mistakenly attributed by auction houses and art dealers to an English painter of the same name, Edward Francis Drew Pritchard (1808-1905) despite their signatures and styles being quite distinct. Any pure landscape (i.e., without buildings of significant note or human figures), any painting of an American scene, or any maritime scene which in essence is a portrait of a sailing vessel, is likely to be by the American Edward Pritchard. Although the English Pritchard painted many coastal scenes which included sailing ships, never or with exceptional rarity would one be looked upon as a portrait of such a vessel. Sources: U.S. and British census data, correspondence with the Brooklyn Library, correspondence with the National Museum of Wales, correspondence with the Bournemouth (England) Library, and an extensive review of art sales references, in print and on the internet. Submitted by Ronald Chase from Askart.com