Artists

Born in Buxton, Maine, 7 August 1801, the artist was probably named after the Smith family's physician, Dr. Royal Brewster. As the eleventh of fourteen children of John McCurdy and Elizabeth McLellan Smith, Royall successfully survived a childhood of limited financial means and some illness to become a successful artisan. Between 1830 and 1837,...

Ruth W. Shute and her physician husband Dr. Samuel A. Shute were itinerant portrait painters known for their individual and collaborated watercolor portraits of individuals living in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and northern New York State beginning in 1827. It appears Samuel became very ill around 1834-35 and was unable to...

The portraitist Frederick Randolph Spencer was born June 7, 1806 in Lennox, New York, one of four children of the lawyer and first postmaster of Canastota, General Ichabod Smith Spencer (1780-1857), and Mary Pierson Spencer (1785-1865). He evinced an early interest for art, and at the age of fifteen saw an exhibition of portraits by Ezra Ames at...

SHUMWAY, Henry Cotton, portrait painter, was born in Middletown, Conn., July 4, 1807. He attended the public schools; served as a clerk in his father's office until his twenty-first birthday, and at an early age produced pencil sketches, mostly portraits, of considerable promise. He attended the antique and life classes of the National Academy of...