A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, George Hitchcock practiced law in the second half of the 1870s but meeting with little success as a lawyer, took up painting and at age 29, left America and became one of the more well-known expatriate painters at the turn of the century.

His specialty became images of the sea with depictions of fishing activity and peasants. His early work was quite muted, but he later became known as the "painter of sunlight" because of brightly colored florals and landscapes with abstract patterns of contrasting color. This transition was applauded by the public and exhibition judges in 1887 when he received a gold medal at the Paris Salon for his painting entry A Culture des Tulips, which had bright multi-colored tulips surrounding a peasant woman.

When he left America, Hitchcock studied English watercolor techniques at Heatherley's School in London in 1879, spent a year in Paris at the Academie Julian studying with Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, and then studied the following winter at the Dusseldorf Academy.

He spent several summers in the Hague, working with marine artist Hendrik Willem Mesdag, and then went to Egmond-aan-Zee, a fishing village on the North Sea, where he became a resident in 1883 and remained until his death in 1913. Occasionally his close friend, artist Gari Melchers joined him, and Hitchcock also went to Paris most winter seasons.

George Hitchcock was voted an Associate of the National Academy of Design in New York and became the only American member of at the Vienna Academy.

Sources included Mary Lublin, "George Hitchcock", Paintings and Sculpture on the Collection of the National Academy of Design, 1826-1925. (David Dearinger, Editor)