AFA Winter 2017

Winter 88 www.afamag.com | www.incollect.com Fig. 8: Francis Cezeron (1747–1828), Portrait of Stevens Thomson Mason , Loudoun County, Va., 1810–1815. Oil on tulip poplar panel, 14½ x 12½ inches. Museum Purchase (2010.100.3). Fig. 9: Francis Cezeron (1747–1828), Portrait of John Thomson Mason, Loudoun County, Va., 1810–1815. Oil on tulip poplar panel, 14½ x 12½ inches. Museum Purchase (2010.100.4). Lexington painter Matthew Harris Jouett to Sully was to introduce Sully to Wright, who, in his formative years as a painter planned a trip east to acquire additional training. 6 The idea of connecting the two artists was purportedly the inspiration of Wright’s early patrons Cassandra Hukill Howard and George Gibson Howard, a dr y goods merchant of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, with connections to Philadelphia (figs. 5 and 6). The Howards played a formative role in Wright’s artistic career by commissioning the youth to render their portraits and by introducing him to Jouett. It is unknown whether Wright made his way to Philadelphia or spent any time in Sully’s studio since he disappears from the record for about nine years. With his reemergence comes a change in his style. In 1831, he received a large commission from the Major family in Culpeper County, Virginia. 7 His more painterly approach to the portrait of William and Elizabeth Thatcher Corbin Major’s daughter “Eliza” Jameson suggests he received some sort of training in the intervening years (Fig. 7). Most notable is the artist’s depiction of an abundant amount of jewelry and hair ornaments, possibly implying a desire to showcase his knowledge of fashionable accoutrements. For artists like French-born Francis Cezeron, travel to the United States was a chance for economic opportunity. Little is known about Cezeron’s training or even when or where he arrived in America. The earliest extant advertisement places him in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1805. For the next ten years, he traveled regionally to Carlisle and Pittsburgh; Frederick, Maryland; Culpeper County, Fredericksburg, and Loudon County, Virginia, the last where he rendered small panel paintings of brothers Stephens Thomson Mason and John Thomson Mason, great-nephews of George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which later became the United States Bill of Rights (Figs. 8, 9). The likenesses are drawn in profile and bear a stylistic similarity to the early work of fellow Lancaster resident and painter Jacob Eichholtz suggesting that Cezeron may have taught Eichholtz to paint. 8 The majority of Cezeron’s known subjects lived in the inland areas of the American backcountry, and his travel seems to have followed portions of the Great Wagon Road. As settlers moved westward, painters found increasing opportunities for portrait commissions in the towns that sprung up along established routes. No one demonstrated this better than Charles Peale Polk, who was raised in the household of his uncle, the painter Charles Willson Peale, but traveled throughout the region during his artistic tenure. Polk’s occupation took him to Baltimore, Washington, D.C.,