James Goodwin McManus

James Goodwin McManus was a noted American artist and a prominent painter in Connecticut during the first half of the twentieth century. His portraits were done in a classic style, while his landscapes were done in a looser, more impressionist style.

McManus was born in Hartford in 1882 to C. James and Eliza (Goodwin) McManus, a descendant of Ozias Goodwin, one of the original founders of the city. At 16, James Goodwin McManus started studying drawing under Charles Noel Flagg in Hartford; he later trained under Walter Griffin and William Gedney Bunce. McManus taught art at Hartford Public High School; and later, after helping to found the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, he taught there and at the Connecticut Art Students League as well. He also spent several summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and at Old Lyme, where he vacationed after 1921. McManus often taught at Guy Wiggins Art School at Hamburg cove in Lyme and later in Essex.

McManus never married. He was a member of the Salmagundi Club of New York, the Lyme Artists Association and the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, where he exhibited his landscapes in annual shows from 1929 to 1954. He died September 6, 1958.