The identity of the artist who created the Denison family portraits has long eluded scholars. His sitters are all from Stonington, Connecticut, and their portraits are part of the tradition of Connecticut portraiture that flourished from c. 1790/1810. One of the first to suggest an identity for The Denison Limner was Ralph Thomas of the New Haven...

Alvan Fisher (August 9, 1792 – February 13, 1863) was one of the United States's pioneers in landscape painting and genre works. Early years He was born in Needham, Massachusetts, the fourth of Aaron and Lucy (Stedman) Fisher's six sons. He moved with members of his family to Dedham, Massachusetts, around 1805 where he worked as a clerk in his...

William Guy Wall (1792 – 1864) was an American painter of Irish birth. Wall was born in Dublin in 1792 and arrived in New York in 1812. He was already a well trained artist and soon became well known for his sensitive watercolor views of the Hudson River Valley and surroundings. Some of these watercolors were published as engravings by John Hill...

Robert Havell, Jr. (Nov. 25, 1793 - Nov. 11, 1878) was the principal engraver of Audubon's Birds of America, perhaps the most significant natural history publication of all time. His aquatint engraving of all but the first ten plates of John James Audubon's Birds of America is now recognized as a significant artistic achievement in its own right...

Hugh Bridport, born in England in 1794, was a portrait painter, drawing instructor, architect, and engraver, who practiced lithography in Philadelphia 1828-1830s. Trained at the Royal Academy and with miniature painter Charles Wilkins, Bridport immigrated to Philadelphia with his artist brother George in 1816. Soon after their arrival, the brothers...

Margaretta Angelica Peale (born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 1, 1795 - died there, January 17, 1882) was an American painter, one of the Peale family of artists. The daughter of James Peale, she was the sister of Sarah Miriam Peale, Anna Claypoole Peale, and Maria Peale. She was taught by her father, and painted primarily still-lifes, many...

Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796 – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in and eventually died in Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village), the eighth of eleven children; his father was a watchmaker and a silversmith. Durand was apprenticed to an engraver from 1812...

John Neagle (4 November 1796 – 17 September 1865) was a fashionable American painter, primarily of portraits, during the first half of the 19th century in Philadelphia. Biography Neagle was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His training in art began with instruction from the drawing-master Pietro Ancora and an apprenticeship to Thomas Wilson,...

Nathaniel Jocelyn (January 31, 1796 - January 13, 1881) was an American painter. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of a clockmaker and engraver. He trained as a watchmaker, later taking up drawing, engraving, and oil painting. He studied engraving with George Munger around 1813: they published at least one print together under the...

Charles Ingham was born in Dublin in 1796, where he became a pupil of William C., a portrait painter known for his likenesses of female subjects. Following four years of study with C., Ingham adopted his master's specialty. Thus, when he left Ireland and moved to New York in 1816, he soon became known as that city's premier "ladies' painter." The...

Little is known about the life of Isaac Sheffield, yet he left a substantial body of easily recognizable work. His usual subjects, painted during the 1830s and early 1840s, were sea captains and their families from the bustling Connecticut port of New London and nearby towns. The artist's father, Captain Isaac Sheffield, was a shipmaster who...

Born in Naples, Nicolino Calyo was an accomplished American nineteenth century view painter who brought the discipline of his classical European training to vibrant portrayals of the American scene.  He studied at the Naples Academy, where he learned Neoclassical, Italian, and Dutch landscape techniques and traditions.  Calyo fled Italy in 1821,...

Charles Codman (circa 1800–1842) was a landscape painter of Portland, Maine. His art is featured at the Portland Museum of Art as mature, fine early American landscape painting. Codman was probably from Boston and was apprenticed to the ornamental painter, John Ritto Penniman. Codman began as a decorative painter and had no formal training...

Sarah Miriam Peale (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 19, 1800 – February 4, 1885, Philadelphia) was an American portrait painter, one of the notable family of artists descended from the miniaturist and still-life painter James Peale, who was her father. She is noted as a portrait painter, mainly of politicians and military figures. Lafayette sat...

Henry Inman's father was an English-born brewer who settled near Utica, New York, and it was there that the future artist was born in 1801, raised, and educated. Aside from primary schooling, Inman also received some artistic instruction in his native town from an itinerant portrait painter. After the family moved to New York City in 1812, he...

William Allen Wall was born to a prominent Quaker family of New Bedford. His father was the master of a Quaker school, ran a hardware store, and promoted cultural activities in the city. Wall seems to have inherited from his father an appreciation of art and may have received instruction from him in watercolor and pencil technique. His father...

Paul Emil Jacobs (August 20, 1802, in Gotha - January 6, 1866) was a German painter. Jacobs, son of the philologist Frederick Jacobs, received his art training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and first became known for his painting of Mercury and Argus (from Classical mythology). In 1824 he went to Rome, where he attracted great critical...