John Linton Chapman

John Linton Chapman (1839 – May 2, 1905) was an American painter and photographer. The son of the painter John Gadsby Chapman, he and his family moved to Rome in 1850, where he and his brother Conrad studied art under their father. There, Chapman began producing paintings of Italian peasants, scenes, and landscapes. Although described as a talented painter, he was also "lazy and unambitious" Chapman was named after one of his father's first patrons. In the spring of 1848, the Chapman family left America for Europe, staying in London, Paris, and Florence before settling in Rome in 1850. In 1858 and 1859, two writers for the art magazine The Crayon noted the boys' potential; the first highlighted Chapman's "vigor" and "fine feeling for color", while the second wrote that Chapman and his brother were "rapidly preparing to take [their father's] place in the first rank of American painters". He was also skilled in photography, which he practiced in Rome. He married at one point, but the marriage failed and the couple divorced. He also lamented the fact that Chapman continued to paint the same paintings repeatedly in order to sell them as potboilers, as well as the fact that he had sold his father and brother's valuable paintings to make a living.

Chapman continued to live impoverished in New York, painting Italian and American scenes, until his death in Westchester County, New York, on May 2, 1905. It took months for his brother to raise the funds needed to bury him next to their father. Although Chapman is remembered as a talented painter, he is also known for his prodigal lifestyle and lack of ambition that contributed to his destitution.