Artists

  John Lewis Krimmel (May 30, 1786-July 15, 1821), sometimes called "the American Hogarth" was America's first painter of genre scenes. Born in Germany, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1809 and soon became a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Initially influenced by Scotland's David Wilkie, England's William Hogarth and America's...

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques Audubon) (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book...

The Beardsley Limner was an itinerant artist who worked along the old Boston Post Road, in Connecticut and Massachusetts, from about 1785 to 1805. He executed some of the most striking naive portraits in New England, and was given the name The Beardsley Limner based on his handsome paintings of Elizabeth and Hezekiah Beardsley, c....

A native of the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Frederick W. Mayhew was born in Chilmark on 6 July 1785. Although Mayhew has been known for some time through his works, several of them signed, the biographical details of his life eluded scholars until recently. Difficulty arose from his misidentification as Nathaniel Mayhew and confusion...

Rubens Peale (May 4, 1784 – July 17, 1865) was an American artist and museum director. Born in Philadelphia, he was a son of artist-naturalist, Charles Willson Peale. Life He was the fourth son of Charles Willson Peale. Rubens had weak eyes and, unlike most of his siblings, did not set out to be an artist. He traveled with the family in 1802 to...

The portraitist Samuel Lovett Waldo was born April 6, 1783, in Windham, Connecticut, one of eight children born to farmer Zacheus Waldo and his wife Esther Stevens Waldo. At the age of sixteen he went to Hartford and took drawing lessons from an obscure painter named Joseph Steward. He set up a studio there in 1803, but found few clients and...

Although born in England in 1780, John Wesley Jarvis was the son of an American mariner who moved his family back to the United States by the mid-1780s. At the end of that decade, the Jarvises settled in Philadelphia, where the artist spent his childhood and began his artistic training. He is known to have frequented the studio of the aging Matthew...

Thomas Birch, American portrait and marine painter; born in London, England, in 1779; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 3, 1851. He came to the U. S. in 1794, and assisted his artist father, William Birch, in preparing a 29-plate collection of engravings: "Birch's Views of Philadelphia" (1799).[1] Subscribers to the series...

Anson Dickinson, a painter of miniature portraits, was born in Milton, Connecticut, in 1779. He was the eldest of ten children born to Oliver Dickinson Junior (1757-1847) and Anna Landon Dickinson (1760-1849). As a boy, Anson Dickinson was apprenticed to Litchfield silversmith Isaac Thompson. Little else is known about his early art training. He first...

Edward Greene Malbone was one of the leading miniaturist painters in early American art. Malbone was born illegitimate and went by the name “Greene,” his mothers name for most of his life until the court mandated that he could use his fathers’ name, “Malbone.” Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Malbone cultivated a love for the arts as a...

Jacob Eichholtz was born November 2, 1776, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he spent much of his life. His first drawing lessons were rudimentary, obtained from a sign painter. He apprenticed with a copper and tinsmith before being hired as a journeyman to a master coppersmith in 1801. He established his own business, working as a tinsmith until...

John Vanderlyn (October 18, 1775 – September 23, 1852) was an American neoclassicist painter. Biography Vanderlyn was born at Kingston, New York. He was employed by a print-seller in New York, and was first instructed in art by Archibald Robinson (1765–1835), a Scotsman who was afterwards one of the directors of the American Academy of...

Cephas Thompson (July 1, 1775 – November 6, 1856) was a successful, self-taught, early nineteenth-century portrait painter in the United States, who was born, died, and lived most of his life in Middleborough, Massachusetts. Thompson's father fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Thompson married Olive Leonard on March 18, 1802. His son, Cephas...

Jeremiah Paul ( fl 1795; d nr St Louis, MO, 13 July 1820). American painter. He was a minor yet versatile artist whose career began in Philadelphia, PA, in the 1790s. The son of a Quaker schoolmaster, Paul received his early training from Charles Willson Peale and in 1795 participated in the founding of the Columbianum, Peale's ill-fated attempt to...

William Jennys (1774–1859), also known as J. William Jennys, was an American primitive portrait painter who was active from about 1790 to 1810. He traveled throughout New England seeking commissions in rural areas and small towns. His early works are characterized by broadly modeled faces with a minimum of costume detail and bare backgrounds....

The family records that William John Thomson had one son, William Thomas Thomson, who had a son Spencer Campbell Thomson, but there the trail ends. Any leads about the early Thomson family history would be welcomed by the Thomson family. William John Thomson was originally taken to London where he learned to paint and exhibited at the Royal...

Henry Sargent (baptized November 25, 1770 — February 21, 1845), American painter and military man, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was one of seven children born to Daniel and Mary (Turner) Sargent. He was the brother of author Lucius Manlius Sargent, a nephew of American Revolutionary War soldier Paul Dudley Sargent,[1] and a...

John Hill was born in London in 1770, and was apprenticed as a youth to an engraver in that city. He became interested in the process of aquatinting, a technique wherein a metal plate is etched several times in order to create tonal gradations, resulting in a print that is easier to hand-color due to the variety of subtle tones produced. Hill began...

William M.S. Doyle was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1769. His father was a British soldier, but Doyle seems to have lived and worked his entire life in Boston. Doyle was a silhouettist, artist of portraits of both full-size and miniature. He worked in silhouette cutting, watercolor, oil and pastel. His silhouettes were beautifully rendered in...

The first historian of the American stage, William Dunlap was a passionate lover of the arts, a gifted painter, a tireless chronicler of his day and a writer of considerable charm. He wrote or adapted more than sixty plays. While subsequent scholarship has found a considerable number of innacuracies in his historical work, his first hand account of...

Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design the Nautilus, which was the first practical submarine in history.[1] Fulton became interested in steamboats in...

Edward Savage (November 26, 1761 – July 6, 1817) was an American portrait painter and engraver. He was born in Princeton, Mass., and at first worked as a goldsmith, also practicing engraving. Although seemingly untrained in painting, he came into prominence in 1790 through his portrait of George Washington, intended as a gift to Harvard...

(b Burton in Kendall or Lorton, Cumbria, 1760; d Brooklyn, NY, 12 Aug 1820). American painter of English birth. In England he was apprenticed to a tailor and then worked in the textile trade. A business failure prompted him to leave London for New York in 1795. By early 1798 he was settled in Baltimore, MD, where he lived for the next 20 years....

Census records indicate that Frederick Kemmelmeyer was more than forty-five years old in 1800, and therefore born sometime prior to 1755, but no record of his birth has been found. A Frederick Kimmelmeiger listed in naturalization papers issued at Annapolis, Maryland, on 8 October 1788 is presumed to be the artist. He first advertised in the...

Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) (December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island. Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists.[2] His best known work, the unfinished portrait of George Washington that is sometimes referred to as The Athenaeum, was begun in 1796 and never...

Joseph Steward (1753–1822) was a prominent American artist. Early years Joseph Steward was born on July 6, 1753. He was the son of Joseph and Jane (Wilson) Steward of Upton, Massachusetts. Stewart went to Dartmouth College, graduating in 1780. Joseph Steward continued his studies under the guidance of Reverend Doctor Levi Hart of Preston,...

Michele Felice Cornè, considered to be Salem, Massachusetts’ most versatile early nineteenth century artist, arrived in America from Naples, Italy in 1800. Cornè worked and lived in Salem from 1800-06 when he moved to Boston. During his Boston tenure (1807-22) the artist was noted for painting portraits of Boston ships and naval battles of the...

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller (February 18, 1751 — October 5, 1811) was a Swedish painter whose notable works include Danaë receiving Jupiter in a Shower of Gold. Wertmüller was born in Stockholm and studied art at home before moving to Paris in 1772 to study under his cousin Alexander Roslin and French painter Joseph-Marie Vien.[1] On July 30,...

James Peale (1749 – May 24, 1831) was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale. Peale was born in Chestertown, Maryland, the second child, after Charles, of Charles Peale (1709–1750) and Margaret Triggs (1709–1791). His father died when he was an...

Henry Benbridge born October 1743 [1] died February 1812), early American portrait painter, was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James and Mary (Clark) Benbridge. When he was seven years old, his mother, who had been left a widow, was married to Thomas Gordon, a wealthy Scot. The boy's artistic talent was encouraged. He made decorative...

Matthew Pratt was born in Philadelphia in 1734. He served an apprenticeship with his uncle James Claypoole, a limner and painter, from 1749 to 1755. Pratt opened a similar business which he interrupted with a brief speculative trading voyage to Jamaica. When he returned to Philadelphia he began to paint portraits, at which he proved very...

John Durand's birth and death dates are unknown, and only a few of his portraits are signed and dated. The sketchy chronology of his life is based on these few signed works, as well as on account book entries and information about his sitters. Scholars place his first activity in Virginia in 1765, but by 1766 Durand was in New York City. In that year...

John Hesselius (1728–1778) was a portraitist who worked mostly in Virginia and Maryland. He was the son of the Swedish-born portraitist Gustavus Hesselius. Background John Hesselius was most likely born in Philadelphia, where his father owned a house to satisfy clients. Claims that he was born in Prince Georges County, Maryland are unfounded,...

Robert Edge Pine was an English portraitist and history painter who spent the last four years of his life in the United States. He was one of the first artists to paint history paintings of the events of the American Revolution. Pine was born in London, around 1730, the son of engraver John Pine. His exact birth date has never been discovered, and...

Jeremiah Theus (sometimes Jeremiah Theüs[note 1]) (April 5, 1716 – May 17, 1774) was a Swiss-born American painter, primarily of portraits. He was active mainly around Charleston, South Carolina, in which city he remained almost without competition for the bulk of his career.[1] Early life and career Theus was born in the city of Chur, in the...

Joseph Badger (ca.1707–1765) was a portrait artist in Boston, Massachusetts in the 18th-century. He painted some 80 portraits of merchants, businessmen, clergy, and other notables, and their wives and children. Biography Badger was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to tailor Stephen Badger and Mercy Kettell. In 1731 he married Katharine Felch;...

Peter Pelham (ca. 1695[1] – December 1751), American limner and engraver, was born in England, a son of a man named "gentleman" in his will. His father, who died in Chichester, Sussex, in 1756, is revealed in letters to his son in America as a man of some property.[2] London Pelham was one of several London artists who learned the then new...