Washington Allston

Allston, Washington. (Waccamaw, South Carolina, November 5, 1779-July 9, 1843, Cambridge Port, Massachusetts). American painter and author. Graduated Harvard 1800. Went to London in 1801, Paris in 1803, Rome in 1805, returned to England 1810-1818. While in England, 1815, confirmed in the Anglican Church, and from then on devoted himself to an intensive cultivation of the Christian virtues. The Sylphs of the Seasons, first book of poems, published in 1813. Monaldi, a romance, published 1841. A sonnet of 14 lines entitled "Immortality" in Lectures on Art and Poems of 1850, ed. by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. provided the text for a hymn "To Think for aye; to breathe immortal breath" in Hymns for all Christians, 1869.

-Carlton York Smith, DNAH Archives