Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn

Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn (October 13, 1866 – December 21, 1965) was an American artist and adventurer. Deaf from the age of five, Washburn had a varied career, including creating paintings and etchings and serving as a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War, Mexican Revolution, and World War I. He was also an accomplished naturalist, writing on the intelligence of insects and spiders as well as serving on an expedition collecting bird eggs.

Early life and education

Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn was born October 13, 1866, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was born into a wealthy family, the son of William Drew Washburn and the grandson of Israel and Martha Washburn. He became deaf at age five after contracting scarlet fever and spinal meningitis.

Washburn attended Gallaudet College, graduating as the class valedictorian with a Bachelors of Arts degree in 1890. He went on to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1893. He took private lessons from painter William Merritt Chase and studied at Chase's Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art, where he returned multiple summers. He traveled to Europe along with Chase and other students, studying with Albert Besnard in Paris and with Joaquín Sorolla in Spain.

He exhibited regularly around the beginning of the twentieth century, including in the Paris salons, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

International travels

In 1904, the Chicago Daily News hired him as a war correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War from Manchuria and Japan via etchings and text. He lived in a temple in Kyoto along with his brother Stanley Washburn. He returned to the U.S. in 1907 and continued to work on his etchings. When the Mexican Revolution began, he reported on the conflict; at one point the railroad station where he was typing a report was riddled with bullets. Washburn traveled to the Marquesas Islands with a scientific expedition, sketching rare birds and collecting eggs.

Awards and legacy

Gallaudet College awarded Washburn an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1924 and he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bowdoin College in 1947. In 1969, Gallaudet dedicated the Washburn Arts Center in his honor.