Charles Caleb Ward was born in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, the grandson of a New York Ward who had left for New Brunswick around the time of the Revolutionary War because of loyalist sympathies. The Ward family grew to local prominence there, becoming involved in the shipping and quarrying businesses. As a young man, Charles Caleb Ward was sent to London to learn the family shipping business. Instead, he spent most of his time studying art with the English pre-Raphaelite painter, William Henry Hunt (1790–1864), who was known for meticulous still lifes often centered on a bird’s nest in a forest setting. After living in London and Paris for several years, Ward moved to New York in 1850, and stayed for a year before leaving the city to travel variously throughout the East, and eventually resettled and married in New Brunswick. Ward returned to New York in 1868, where he maintained a studio at least until 1872. His whereabouts for the next ten years are not known, but it seems likely that he may have remained in New York until the early 1880s.
Ward is known to have been back in Canada by 1881, as when one of his works was included in the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition in that year, he was recorded as living in New Brunswick. But this does confirm that Ward maintained a tie to the New York art world even after his return to Canada. Very little is known of his activity after 1881, although a small number of works have surfaced from the late 1880s and 1890s. He died in Rothesay, New Brunswick, in 1896.
