AFA Winter 2017

2017 Antiques & Fine Art 85 Fig. 4: Ralph E. W. Earl (1785/88–1838), Portrait of Sarah Martin Lewis King Claiborne, Nashville, Tenn., ca. 1825. Oil on canvas, 29½ x 24½ inches. Museum Purchase (2017-301). self-taught, traveled not only within the northeastern United States but throughout the West and South. In pursuit of economic opportunity, painters followed potential leads near and far from home, often journeying into recently settled regions of the new nation. New England artists Cephas Thompson and Ralph E. W. Earl traveled to Charleston and to Nashville, Tennessee, respectively, in much the same way that midwestern painter Thomas Jefferson Wright journeyed to Philadelphia and French artist Francis Cezeron came to the mid-Atlantic region. Other artists like Charles Peale Polk worked regionally, traveling within a smaller geographic area. Colorful descriptions of new lands lured painters and patrons alike to areas westward and south. For Pennsylvania-resident Josiah Espy, the enthusiastic accounts of the “beauty and richness of the Ohio Valley” motivated his journey west to Lexington, Kentucky, along with a desire to reunite with family who had relocated decades earlier. 1 His own written and published description of the town as prosperous, and its comparison to