Painting size: 14.5” x 11.75”
Frame: 27” x 24.25”

A painter of interiors, historical scenes and portraits, Neal was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1838 and educated at the Andover Academy. In 1857, he traveled to San Francisco via New Orleans and the Isthmus of Panama and, without the benefit of formal art training, quickly became one of the city's most sought after portraitists. A wealthy patron financed a trip to Munich for Neal to study at the Royal Academy in 1861. He wed the daughter of one of his teachers and made Munich his home. From 1869 to1876, Neal worked in the atelier of Karl von Piloty. In 1876, the Munich Royal Academy awarded Neal a gold metal, the first American to receive such an honor. Though based in Germany, he regularly exhibited in San Francisco through 1898 and visited the U.S. for portrait commissions. Far Away Thoughts is a strong example of Neal’s interiors, using light to convey a gentle narrative. A dreamy, teen-aged boy sits next to a kitchen fireplace, school slate on his lap, lost in thought. A motherly figure in the shadows checks on him while in the background, an older man eats supper in a warm, candlelit room.

Neal was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York and the Boston Art Club. Examples of his work can be found at the Whistler House Museum in Lowell, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Royal Gallery in Stuttgart.