Portraits

and
Painters
in the 1830s

When you look around the walls of your room, what do you see? The walls portrait looked like them rather than looked like a fancy piece of art. Some
probably aren’t blank. Are there posters? Are there photos of your friends or more trained artists thought maybe these new clients just couldn’t tell the
pets? Your whole home probably has decorations on the walls that show the difference between good and bad paintings! Today, we often call this type of
things and people important to your family. In the early 1800s, decorating the art “folk art.”
house was important, too.
We don’t know who painted many of the paintings in Old Sturbridge Village’s
Today, photographs are a really important part of our lives. They help us to collection. We also don’t know who is in many of these paintings. Still, we
remember important people, places, and moments. The first photographs know a little bit about some of the artists from the 1830s. Some of them were
were taken in 1826. Still, most rural New Englanders did not have photographs trained in art school. Some of them started as ornamental painters. This
of their family members. Instead, they had painted portraits. A portrait is a means that they mostly painted signs or furniture before they painted people.
picture of a person. These portraits were made by painters who traveled all Some of them weren’t trained at all! If you are interested, a few well-known
around the area. Many of these artists painted thousands of people over their artists from the New England in the 1830s include:
careers!
● Ammi Phillips
In earlier years, only wealthy families could get portraits made. Most houses ● Erastus Salisbury Field
in New England had no paintings at all. By the early 1800s, more and more ● Ruth Henshaw Bascom
families could afford these portraits. It was still a little expensive. Four or five
portraits of family members could cost $40 or more. This was as much as Many young women
buying a horse or renting a house for a whole year! This shows that portraits learned how to paint at
were very important to some families. school. At schools called
academies, daughters
Merchants, lawyers, doctors, sea from middle class
captains, and some craftsmen families practiced making
could afford to get these paintings maps, painting flowers,
made. The portrait sitter usually and stitching beautiful
held something that was valuable samplers. Their parents
to their trade and showed they would show off their art
were educated and respectable. so that people knew they
For example, OSV’s painting of could afford to send their
Dr. Jesse Kitteredge Smith shows daughter to a nice school.
him with some of his medical tools,
including a tooth key for pulling When photography became popular in
teeth! A lawyer might show off his the 1840s, some portrait painters gave
law office. A watch maker might up painting and became photographers
show off his watchmaking tools. instead. Photographs were more
Artists painted women in their realistic than paintings, and people liked
most fashionable clothes. They that. Today, it’s still fun to look back and
often held their needlework, which these portraits from almost 200 years
showed off their sewing skills. ago and wonder about the people in
them!
Sometimes families ordered
portraits of people who had died
so that they could remember What would you include in
them. Here is a painting of your portrait to show what was
Hannah Elizabeth Tucker, who important to you?
died when she was seven years
old.

To our 21st-century eyes, these

portraits might not look very
good. Some of them make the
people look flat rather than like
living people. Believe it or not,
many 19th-century people liked
their portraits that way! It was
most important to them that the Discover New England Living History!

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY. RI.3.2-3, 7; 4.2-3; 5.2, 8; 6.1, 7 nieonline.com/courantnie