Howard Russell Butler

Howard Russell Butler was an American painter and founder of the American Fine Arts Society. Butler also persuaded Andrew Carnegie to fund the construction of Carnegie Lake near Princeton University. Butler also designed a mansion, an astronomy hall and painted a solar eclipse for the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Butler was born in New York City. He was the son of William Allen Butler, a lawyer and satirist. His early artistic training with William Shannon was complentented by visits to the National Academy of Design, where his parents were both fellows, and the studio of his uncle, William Stanley Haseltine.

Source: Wikipedia