George Henry Boughton RA (4 December 1833 – 19 January 1905)[1] was an Anglo-American landscape and genre painter, illustrator and writer.

[4] After returning to the U.S.,[5] Boughton exhibited his works in Washington, D.C. and New York City, but in the late 1850s he finally made a decision to move to Europe.

[citation needed] Boughton illustrated Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems.

In 1893, the edition of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow was published in London with 53 illustrations by Boughton (see bibliography).

A London critic once declared that he "has learnt the secret of putting natural feelings into rustic figures, which has been almost entirely wanting to English painters.

"[citation needed] Boughton exhibited extensively in both Britain and the U.S. and was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1871.

Along with John Callcott Horsley, he was one of the early clients of architect Richard Norman Shaw who built a house for the Boughtons on Campden Hill, London.

The novel Christina Chard (1894) by Mrs Rosa Campbell-Praed (1851–1935), an Australian novelist, was dedicated to Boughton, because he had suggested the idea of the book.

His obituary stated that "he was kindly, genial, humorous, a lover of a good story, the essence of hospitality, and wholly free from jealousy, malice, and incharitable judgments."