From 1802, while the younger artist William Edward West all started portray pics on a downriver journey to New Orleans, to 1918, whilst John Alberts, the final of Frank Duveneck's scholars, labored in Louisville, a wide selection of portrait artists have been lively in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley. Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802--1920 charts the process these artists as they painted the powerful and the lowly, statesmen and enterprise magnates in addition to kingdom people dwelling faraway from city facilities. work by means of every one artist are illustrated, while attainable, from The Filson historic Society selection of a few four hundred snap shots representing the most wide holdings on hand for research within the region.

This quantity starts with a cultural chronology -- a backdrop of serious occasions that formed the style and occasions of either artist and sitter. The chronology is through short biographies of the artists, either legends and up to date discoveries, illustrated by means of their paintings. Matthew Harris Jouett, who studied with Gilbert Stuart, William Edward West, who painted Lord Byron, and Frank Duveneck are recognized; a ways much less so are James T. Poindexter, who painted captivating kid's pics in western Kentucky, cause Croft, a lately came across itinerant within the Louisville region, and Oliver Frazer, the final resident portrait artist in Lexington through the romantic period. Pennington's examine bargains a charming heritage of portraiture not just as a adored ownership but additionally representing a interval of cultural and creative transitions within the historical past of the Ohio River Valley region.