Henry B. Snell

Born in Richmond, England, Snell immigrated to the United States in 1875 at the age of seventeen and studied at the Art Students’ League in New York. The Art Students’ League had been recently formed by a group of artists who believed that the National Academy was too conservative; they were looking for inspiration in the more forward-looking art of Paris.  

From 1899 to 1943, he was a beloved instructor at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now Moore College of Art and Design. It was there that he taught many of the members of the Philadelphia Ten, a professional organization that helped women artists secure exhibition opportunities and sell their work. Artists in this exhibition that were part of the group include Theresa Bernstein, Susan Gertrude Schell, and Susette Inloes Schultz Keast. Snell’s works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the James A. Michener Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Allentown Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, and Woodmere.