George W. Picknell, born in 1864 in North Springfield, Vermont, was a well-known rural landscape painter. After working in Boston as a young engraver, Picknell left to study art at the Paris Julian Academy in 1887. He returned to the United States at the end of his studies to work as an illustrator in Boston and New York.

He again traveled to Paris, where he stayed for an additional fifteen years. During his long tenure in France, Picknell founded the American Artists Association of Paris and regularly exhibited his works of the French countryside at the Salon des Artistes Français. In 1911, Picknell moved back to the United States, settling in Silvermine, Connecticut, where he would die in 1943. While in Silvermine, Picknell continued painting and displayed his works in various regional art galleries. Additionally, he founded the Silvermine Artist Guild and the Fine Arts Theatre in Westport, Connecticut.

He was a regular participant in major exhibitions in the United States and France where he exhibited paintings at the Pennsylvania Academie of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Society of Independent Artists, and had a one- man exhibition at the Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis (Now the Indianapolis Museum of Art); his French venues included (in addition to the Salon des Artistes Français) exhibitions in Toulouse and Nice. He was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the American Federation of Arts, and the Springfield, Illinois Art Association. Picknell will always be remembered for his stunningly alluring paintings of rural landscapes of both Connecticut and France.