Theodore Earl Butler

A lodger at the Hôtel Baudy in 1888, he became Monet’s son-in-law and the only member of the colony to die in Giverny.

Dates1861 — 1936
NationalityAmerican
DisciplinePainter
Place of birthColumbus, Ohio, États-Unis

Biography

Born in Columbus, Ohio, on 16 October 1861, Theodore Earl Butler graduated from Marietta College in 1882, studied at the Art Students League in New York, then moved to Paris, where he worked at the Grande Chaumière, the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian. He died in Giverny on 2 May 1936. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art both give 1860 as his year of birth; 1861 is the date retained by the artist's catalogue and by standard biographical notices. The divergence is not settled here.

Giverny

He arrived in Giverny in 1888 with his friend Theodore Robinson, who had come to introduce the village to his compatriots. He returned in the autumn of 1891 and never really left. In 1892 he married Suzanne Hoschedé, Monet’s stepdaughter and favourite model — the wedding Robinson painted in The Wedding March and recorded in his diary. Suzanne died in 1899; in 1900 Butler married her sister Marthe, who had been raising the children. His house became one of the hearths of the American colony, and he is among those who gave it its continuity.

Relation with the Hôtel Baudy

His first stay in Giverny was at the Hôtel Baudy, from May to September 1888; he was registered there again from October 1891 to 21 July 1892. Both periods fall within the years covered by the surviving guest register — 1887 to 1899 — but that register has not been consulted for this site: reproducing it requires written permission from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Checking these dates against the archival document itself therefore remains to be done.

Principal works