Lessons in Likeness

Cover

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Title page, Copyright, Dedicatoin

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Contents

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pp. vii-

Foreword

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pp. ix-x

Lessons in Likeness, Estill Pennington’s study of portrait painting in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley from about 1800 to the end of the First World War, will delight many readers. In this book he offers a general essay about Kentucky portraiture in that long century and provides a biographical checklist of individual artists, illustrated...

Preface

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pp. xi-xii

The mission of The Filson Historical Society is to collect, preserve, and tell the significant stories of Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley region’s history and culture. The enduring legacy that portrait painters left to our region in the form of portraiture is one of those significant stories. Today, approximately four hundred portraits make...

Acknowledgments

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pp. xiii-xiv

This publication was made possible by the generosity of Dace Brown Stubbs, Laura Lee Brown, and G. Garvin Brown III, whose contributions were made in memory of their father, George Garvin Brown II. The Filson Historical Society is grateful to them for this opportunity to share a portion of its portrait collection with those who...

Introduction

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pp. xv-xxiii

Between 1802, when the young Kentucky artist William Edward West began to paint portraits while on a downriver journey, and 1920, when the last of Frank Duveneck’s students worked in Louisville, a large number of notable portrait artists were active in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley. The purpose of this study is to...

Part one Cultural Chronology

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pp. 1-

1802–1835

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pp. 3-12

In 1802 a young William Edward West went downriver to New Orleans with the Bourbon County farmer and distiller Abram Spears and en route painted Spears’s portrait in miniature, the first noted instance of Kentucky portraiture.¹ The miniature is still in the possession of Spears descendants. West is known to have painted only one...

The Invention of Photography and the Coming of War

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pp. 43-66

Several types of itinerant artists can be identified in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley by the trails left behind by their works. Seasonal itinerants from the northern Ohio River Valley worked in the deep South during the warmer winter months. Conversely, painters seeking to escape the intense heat of New Orleans pursued work in...

Exhibitions, Collecting, and International Trends

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pp. 67-96

In March 1865 Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau as a means of addressing the needs of African-Americans in the former slave states. In Kentucky, the Bureau established offices in Lexington, Louisville, and Paducah under General Clinton Fisk. Fisk reported to Congress that he had seen thirteen black soldiers whipped and two...

Part Two Artists’ Biographies

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pp. 97-222

The artists chosen for inclusion in this section are those whose activity in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley has been identified in previous art historical records and who have an identifiable body of work extant in sufficient quantity in public and private collections to assemble a checklist for comparative...

Appendix

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pp. 223-226

Notes

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pp. 227-234

Abbreviations ofArchives and Collections

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pp. 235-236

Bibliography

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pp. 237-246

INDEX

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pp. 247-252