AFA Winter 2017

Winter 84 www.afamag.com | www.incollect.com Fig. 3: Ralph E. W. Earl (1785/88–1838), Portrait of Thomas Claiborne, Nashville, Tenn., ca. 1825. Oil on canvas, 29½ x 24½ inches. Museum Purchase, The Friends of Colonial Williamsburg Collections Fund (2017-300). The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s exhibition, Artists on the Move: Portraits for a New Nation, gathers together over thirty portraits painted between 1790 and 1840. Drawn from its decorative arts and folk art collections, the assemblage celebrates the rich visual breadth of work created in the formative years of this country. The show explores important concepts surrounding portraiture, including westward migration, regionalism, collecting, consumerism, artistic development, and nationalism. Selections also highlight the movement of artists from coastal regions to newly settled inland areas of the country. While as a whole the thirty plus portraits are a reflection of the ideals that embodied our new country, individually each painting represents the uniqueness of its subject, maker, and the time in which it was created. Traditionally, the notion of artists traveling from town to town in search of commissions has focused on New England folk painters. But research reveals that a large number of geographically diverse portraitists, both academically inclined and