Thomas Waterman Wood was an American painter born in Montpelier, Vermont. Thomas Waterman Wood’s father, John Wood, came to Montpelier from Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1814. The Wood family was of Puritan descent, and it was from Lebanon that John Wood, the father of the artist, married his wife Mary Waterman. John Wood and his brother Cyrus were partners in a cabinet making business, the partnership concluding with the death of Cyrus in 1840. John’s other brother, Zenas, lived to be 84 years of age. John Wood was the captain of an artillery company and for a long time, a deacon in the First Congregational Church. When fortune permitted, Wood went to Boston and studied for a short time in the studio of Chester Harding, a portrait painter. In 1850 he married Miss Minerva Robinson, then living in Waterbury, Vermont, and in the same year he built a summer home in the Carpenter Gothic style on the west side of the mountain gorge through which the road leads up to Northfield. He named this home after his wife, making use of the Latin synonym, Athenwood. During the 1850s, he found means of visiting galleries in London, Paris, Rome and Florence, having previously painted portraits in Canada, Washington and Baltimore. His first European visit, in 1858, was shared with Mrs. Wood. Upon their return he painted portraits in Nashville and Louisville, beginning at the former place The Fiddler, which was completed years afterwards and finally included in the Thomas W. Wood Collection in the Montpelier gallery. At the age of 43, the artist permanently settled himself in New York City, opening a studio as a figure painter. This was in 1866, eight years after the exhibition of his first work in the National Academy of Design, The Baltimore Newsvendor (1858). This painting was sold by mistake to two persons, Mr. J. C. Brune of Baltimore and Mr. Robert L. Stuart of New York, resulting in a long, expensive lawsuit, terminated in favor of Mr. Brune. During his residence in Louisville, Wood painted The Contraband, Recruit and Veteran, suggested by the sight of a black man in light brown jeans, who had but one leg and was hobbling along on home-made crutches. This celebrated work commemorates the transition of the African American from slavery to freedom and is now the property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.