Ohio History Journal

112                                  OHIO HISTORY

from the itinerant artist Jarvis Hanks and

two years experience as a traveling limner

in northeastern Ohio and western Penn-

sylvania. Beard progressed rapidly in Cin-

cinnati, learning through the study of

paintings by other artists. Only five years

later his work elicited praise from Har-

riet Martineau during her visit to the

United States. In her book she stated that

she liked his work better than that of any

other American artist.³ Twenty-five years

later Beard's reputation was so well es-

tablished that Henry Tuckerman wrote:

"Many adherents in the South-west still

hold to him, and will have their portraits

by no other hand."⁴ Despite Beard's repu-

tation in portraiture he first attracted at-

tention by his ability to paint animals and

children. On occasion he also depicted

genre, landscape, and literary subjects,

this broad range making him equally fa-

mous in eastern cities.

Ranking next to Beard and considered

"pre-eminent" in painting and sculpture

by most contemporaneous writers, John P.

Frankenstein achieved artistic success be-

fore he was twenty.⁵ In 1832 at age fif-

teen he began painting portraits in Cin-

cinnati, meanwhile studying anatomy at

the Ohio Medical College.⁶ A few years

later he studied sculpture with Hiram

Powers, who was soon to become a world-

famous artist. Frankenstein developed

rapidly both as a portrait painter and as

a sculptor. Although he established a

studio in Philadelphia in 1834, he fre-

quently visited Cincinnati during the next

ten years. Unfortunately, his high-strung

temperament alienated many clients, and

as his career suffered, he developed a

feeling of being unappreciated. In conse-

quence, his influence in Cincinnati's art

affairs diminished, and he withdrew more

and more from society. Many years later

Frankenstein bitterly attacked Nicholas

Longworth and other Cincinnati patrons

in a satirical booklet entitled American

Art: Its Awful Altitude. A Satire.7

John Frankenstein's younger brother

Godfrey also was a gifted artist. At thir-

teen, Godfrey had begun painting signs

in the Queen City and, when nineteen,

had opened his own portrait studio.⁸ His

industry and talent resulted in his becom-

ing a leader among the younger artists

of the city. He was one of the founders,

with John Whetstone, of the second Cin-

cinnati Academy of Fine Arts in 1838 and,

in 1840, succeeded Whetstone as its presi-

dent.⁹ Although he painted many por-

traits, including one of William Cullen

Bryant, Godfrey Frankenstein delighted in

landscape painting. After a first visit to

Niagara in 1844, he painted more than

one hundred careful studies of the river

and the falls during the next twenty

years.10 Many of these works were used

as references in his "Panorama of the Ni-

agara," which enjoyed a successful tour

of the country in 1853-54. Godfrey also

made several visits to the White Moun-

tains but most frequently painted the

scenery around Cincinnati and Spring-

field. Godfrey was one of the few artists

who chose to remain in Cincinnati after

achieving more than a local reputation.

Other artists of lesser fame who came

to Cincinnati between the years 1830 and

1840 include Daniel Steele, E. Hall Mar-

tin, John Crossman, Benjamin Harriman,

Joseph Maggini, John J. Tucker, Sidney

S. Lyon, John Caspar Wild, Philip Young,

William B. Brannan, Gerhard Mueller,

Samuel S. Walker, E. P. Cranch, John L.

Leslie, Peyton Symmes, Thomas Campbell,

and Clement R. Edwards. George Winter

was active in Cincinnati in 1836 and 1837

before moving further westward to Indi-

ana, where he painted portraits and many

scenes of Indian life.11 Horace Harding,

younger brother of the famous Chester

Harding, established himself in the city

before 1834 and worked there intermit-

tently through 1850. Jared B. Flagg, also

a member of a famous painting family,

and brother of George W. Flagg, painted

portraits in Cincinnati in 1840 and 1841.12

Henry Kirke Brown, later famous as a

sculptor, started as a portrait painter in

Cincinnati in 1836.13 Interestingly enough

he, together with James Beard, was instru-

mental in helping Worthington Whittredge

make his start as an artist.

The career of Thomas Worthington

Whittredge was marked by slow, steady

progress, eventually leading to the presi-

dency of the National Academy of Design

in 1865.14 Whittredge had begun in Cin-

cinnati by trying house painting, sign

painting, and daguerreotypy without suc-

COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITS                      115

for a fixed sum, usually about five dollars

each. The money collected was used to

produce a quality engraving of a famous

painting, a print of which went to each

shareholder. The balance of the funds,

after expenses, went to purchase original

works of art selected by a committee and

distributed by lot among the subscribers.

Each subscriber thus received the value

of his investment in the form of a fine

reproduction, plus an opportunity to win

an original painting.

Notices were issued periodically to in-

form subscribers of paintings purchased

and membership enrollments. Gradually

these notices expanded from brief listings

of the paintings into monthly art periodi-

cals containing articles on artists and

aesthetics, exhibition reviews, and news

of artists abroad. Since native subjects of

American life and landscape were con-

tinuously deemed most desirable by the

selection committees, the publications were

very influential in creating the taste of

art union subscribers. People looked with

new eyes as the artists brought the coun-

tryside into focus.

The increasing popularity of landscape

and American genre painting during the

period 1840 to 1860 was reflected in the

Cincinnati directories and the listing of

artists by such writers as Charles Cist.

Where once the title "portrait painter"

had precedence, terms such as "landscape,"

"marine," and "historical painter," now

became predominant. Nonetheless, nearly

every painter could produce a portrait

when the opportunity offered. For most

artists in the West this was economic

necessity.

Outstanding among these more versatile

painters was William Henry Powell, who,

through the philanthropy of Nicholas

Longworth, had been able to study in the

East. Although he suffered from poor

health and financial problems during his

early career, in 1847 his success was con-

firmed by the commission from congress

to paint the remaining panel in the capi-

tol rotunda at Washington. His historic

painting "Battle of Lake Erie," commis-

sioned for the capitol at Columbus, also

brought him much fame.20

One of Powell's contemporaries, the

poet-painter Thomas Buchanan Read, ri-

valed Powell in his quick rise to fame.

Read arrived in Cincinnati in 1837 after

a succession of jobs: rolling cigars, paint-

ing signs, acting, and carving tomb-

stones.21 Read's portrait painting soon

caught the eye of Nicholas Longworth,

who assisted him financially in his art

training and later helped him establish

a studio in New York City. Like most

western artists, Read first achieved his

local reputation in portraiture; later he

became known for historical painting

based on literary themes.

Simultaneously with his development as

a painter, Read aspired to lecome a poet

and conscientiously gave equal time to

that pursuit. His efforts were well re-

ceived. By 1846, when he moved to Phila-

delphia, he was professionally recognized

in both fields, his reputation as a poet

overshadowing his fame as a painter.22

Many volumes of his poems were pub-

lished, the best known of these being

"Sheridan's Ride."

Successful women painters were com-

paratively scarce in the United States in

the nineteenth century, but Cincinnati

could boast of two in the same decade,

Sophie Gengembre and Lilly Martin

Spencer. Both were born in France and

both immigrated with their families to

Ohio. Although Sophie Gengembre never

achieved the national reputation of Lilly

Martin Spencer, she painted many por-

traits of Cincinnatians and enjoyed an

excellent local reputation.

Lilly Martin, born Angelique Marie Mar-

tin, had shown considerable natural tal-

ent as a child and had been encouraged

by her father and the Marietta artist

Charles Sullivan. Only nineteen when she

arrived in Cincinnati in 1841, she was

already a prodigious painter.23 In No-

vember of that year, shortly after her ar-

rival, she had a public exhibition of her

works and the following year showed six

paintings in the second exhibition of the

Society for the Promotion of Useful

Knowledge. She refused Nicholas Long-

worth's offer to finance her in studying

and copying the old masters abroad be-

cause he stipulated that she could do no

original painting during the trip. In a

letter to her mother in 1842, Lilly ex-

plained her purpose and philosophy. "I

118                                  OHIO HISTORY

ana, to learn house and carriage painting,

but after taking a few art lessons in Cin-

cinnati, he became an itinerant artist in

central Indiana. In 1836 he began three

years of study at the Pennsylvania Acad-

emy of Fine Arts with Thomas Sully and

Russell Smith. Although known today

primarily as a portrait painter, his two

large Biblical panoramas of the creation

and the fall of man were very famous in

the East as well as the West.

Joseph Oriel Eaton ran away from his

Newark home at seventeen to become an

itinerant painter in Indiana. He was aided

and encouraged by Jacob Cox, a local art-

ist in Indianapolis, and according to the

Indiana State Sentinel of December 6,

1845, he was then painting "admirable

likenesses of a few who have taste enough

to appreciate genius, and faces of which

they are not ashamed."

In 1846 Eaton moved to Cincinnati,

where he came in contact with James

Beard, Thomas Buchanan Read, and

Worthington Whittredge. His reputation

for portraiture grew rapidly. Jacob Cox

later said that in seventeen years in Cin-

cinnati, Eaton "made by his own brush

$50,000 and was the most popular and

best portrait painter there."z6 Henry A.

Ford, writing the history of the Queen

City only six years after Eaton's death,

put him down as one of the most famous

portrait painters in the country.27 More-

over, Eaton painted many landscapes of

Ohio and the northeastern states.

Both Eaton and Williams found the

Cincinnati market for portrait commis-

sions quite competitive. Nonetheless, the

patronage and interest in painting created

by the Western Art Union provided a

very favorable climate for art. At mid-

century Cincinnati was unquestionably the

cultural center of the region, and was

referred to, aptly enough, as the Paris of

the West. Editor Henry Ratterman, com-

menting on local art activities some years

later, described the role of the Queen

City when he wrote:

During this period art evinced more

life, more vitality, more self-reliance,

in Cincinnati than at any other period.

. . .Our city was generally the start-

ing point of American artists. We

gave them birth and nourishment in

their infancy; and when our artists

were grown to manhood, then the east

would come to woo and wed them, and

toast of them as their own.28

THE AUTHOR: Donald R. MacKenzie

is chairman of the department of art at

the College of Wooster. This is the second

in a series of articles he has written on

early Ohio painters that is based on the

painting collection at the Ohio Historical

Society. The first article, "The Itinerant

Artist in Early Ohio," appeared in the

Winter 1964 issue.