Description:
Oil portrait of the 3/4 profile and waist length of an unknown man with his body turned to his left and his head facing forward, who is wearing a white shirt with cravat and a blue jacket with brass buttons, set a shaded oval, which is signed In the lower right hand corner, "R. Earl./ Pinxt 1802." Ralph Eleazer Whiteside Earl (1785/88-1838) was the son of the well-known 18th century Connecticut portrait and landscape artist, Ralph Earl (1751-1801). As a boy, Earl Jr. received training from his father, working with him until his father's death in 1801. From 1802-1808, Earl, Jr. continued to paint a small number of portraits, which closely resembled the distinctive style that characterized his father's work, in the upper Connecticut River Valley and in Troy, New York, where his mother, Ann Whiteside Earl, and sister, Mariann Earl, lived. In 1809, Earl, Jr. left for London where he studied and painted for several years; in 1815, he returned to American where he settled in the South. From 1817 to 1829, he lived in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became the leading portrait painter and married Jane Cafferty, the niece of Rachel Donelson Jackson (1767-1828), the wife of General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). After Andrew Jackson's election to the Presidency and his wife's death in 1828, Jackson invited Earl, Jr., to move to the White House where he was viewed as "court painter," which Earl did in 1829 and painted portraits of Jackson and many visitors to the White House. In 1837, Earl returned to Tennessee with Jackson, and died at Jackson's home, the Hermitage, in September 1838.
Tags:
portraits Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+64.286 |
