Allen, Thomas, son of Thomas and Anne C. (Russell ) Allen, was born October 19, 1849, at St. Louis, Mo.
He was educated at the high school, Pittsfield, Mass., at the Williston Seminary, Easthampton, and then entered the Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., after which he studied art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, at Dilsseldorf, Germany, where he graduated from the master class in 1878, and afterward studied three years in France.
He first exhibited his work in New York, at the National Academy of Design, in 1877, and has been represented in the National Academy at almost every exhibition since then. In 1882 and in 1884 was made an associate of the National Academy of Design. In 1880 he was elected a member of the Society of American Artists. His specialty is landscape and animal painting.
After nearly ten years of foreign study, he opened his studio in the Pelham Studio on Boylston Street, Boston; not finding it sufficiently commodious, however, and meeting with marked success as a painter, he purchased a house on Commonwealth Avenue, in 1883, for a permanent home, and there built a large studio at the top of the house which he now occupies.
Mr. Allen was first married in 1880, in Northampton, to Eleanor G., daughter of Prof. J. D. and Louisa (Goddard) Whitney of Cambridge, who left him one child; Eleanor Whitney Allen. In 1884, in Boston, Mr. Allen married Alice, daughter of Hon. Ambrose A. and Maria (Fletcher) Ranney, of Boston. Their only child is Thomas Allen, Jr.
Mr. Allen is president of the Paint and Clay Club, vice-president of the Boston Art Club, patron of the Metropolitan Museum, N. Y., and a member of the permanent committee of the School of Drawing and Painting at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
He is a great grandson of the Rev. Thomas Allen, the first minister in Pittsfield, who is known as the “fighting parson.” And grand nephew for the Rev. William Allen of Northampton author of “Allen’s Biographical Dictionary.” His father, who died at Washington, D. C., while representing in Congress the 2d district of Missouri, had a national reputation as a scholar and statesman, financier and philanthropist.