Claire Shuttleworth

Claire Shuttleworth was a painter, educator, and musician born in Buffalo. She has an international reputation and is known as the “Painter of the Niagara.” In addition to her well-known sea and landscape paintings, she was also a portrait artist. She primarily worked in oils, watercolors, and pencil. As a girl, she was sent to Saint Agnes School in Albany to study music. In her spare time, she discovered her principle passion: painting.

Shuttleworth studied painting at the Buffalo Art Students League under Canadian painter George Bridgeman and also studied in New York. She then painted and studied in France and Italy for five summers under American painter Frank Vincent DuMond. She enrolled in the Academie Vitti in Paris under Luc-Olivier Merson, Raphael Collin, and Paul LeRoy.

Upon returning to Buffalo, she was awarded the fellowship prize of the Buffalo Society of Artists. She was an active member of the organization as well as the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the Society of Women Painters, and the Sculptors and the Buffalo Arts Club.

Fascinated by the Niagara River since childhood, Shuttleworth attempted to preserve the natural beauty to posterity by creating a series of paintings of the waterway before it became diminished by the encroachments of commerce. Ultimately, she produced over 100 paintings of the Falls and Niagara River. She lived and worked in Buffalo, and kept a summer studio, which she endearingly called “Miglestreams,” in Chippewa, Ontario, Canada, where the Welland and Niagara Rivers met. Throughout her career, Shuttleworth painted, sketched, and exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.