John Butler

Who was John Butler?

John Davidson Butler, was an American artist from Seattle, Washington. He worked primarily as a painter, but later also as a printmaker and ceramicist.

Butler was one of three Seattle artists who worked together under the name "The Triad". The others were etcher Roi Partridge and miniaturist Clare Shepard Shisler. Also in their circle were photographer Imogen Cunningham, and painters Mabel Lisle Ducasse and Yasushi Tanaka.

As a youth, Butler studied in Seattle under Carlotta Blaurock, who had been, in turn, a student of James McNeill Whistler. He also studied with Ella Shepard Bush and other local artists. Some of his early work was exhibited at Seattle's 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. In 1910, he followed Partridge to New York, where two of Butler's watercolors were shown at the American Watercolor Society exhibition at the National Academy of Design. The two traveled on to Europe where Butler studied at the Colorossi Academy in Paris and also studied in Germany.

Returning to America, he continued his studies under William Merritt Chase, at a summer 1914 class in Carmel, California. There, he shared a first prize from Chase with a fellow Seattle artist, Louise Crow. Upon returning home, he had a successful solo exhibition at the Seattle Fine Arts Society, which was a predecessor to the Seattle Art Museum. He offered private classes, and also became the first teacher of painting at the Cornish School, later Cornish College of the Arts. His students included Kenneth Callahan and Thomas Handforth.