Howard Russell Butler was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and received degrees in science and law from Princeton University and Columbia University. In 1884 he decided to pursue a career in art, traveled to Mexico, and began studies with Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900). He later worked with James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) and George de Forest Brush (1855-1941) at the Art Students' League in New York. After a visit to Paris in 1885, he spent summers in Concarneau, France, where he painted his most famous work, Seaweed Gatherers. He exhibited at the Paris Salon, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the National Academy of Design in New York. Butler was the founder and first president of the American Fine Arts Society. In the early 1920s he established a studio in Santa Barbara, California. Butler's work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Biography courtesy of Schwarz Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/schwarzphila