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Exhibition History“Meet Your Neighbors: New England Portraits, Painters and Society, 1790-1850,” Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, MA, April 1, 1992 – January 5, 1993.
“Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art,” Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, August 23 – December 31, 2008; New York State Museum, Albany, NY, September 9, 2009 – January 6, 2010.
“American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity,” Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT, February 17 – May 8, 2017.
“The Art of the Erie Canal,” New York State Museum, Albany, NY, April 28 – September 23, 2018.
"Rufus Porter's Curious World," Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, December 12, 2019 - May 31, 2020.
BibliographySelections from the Collections of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, vol. VI (auct. cat. New York, NY, 1964-1965), cat. no. 26, ill.
Cosentino, Andrew J., “Charles Bird King: An Appreciation,” in American Art Journal, Vol. VI, No. 1 (May 1974), p. 61, fig. 11, ill.
Dinnerstein, Lois, “Artists in Their Studios,” in American Heritage, Vol. 34, No. 2 (February/ March, 1983), p. 81, ill.
Artist
Charles Bird King
(1785 - 1862)
The Itinerant Artist
Datec. 1850
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsSight: 43 3/4 × 56 in. (111.1 × 142.2 cm)
Object numberN0537.1967
Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Museum Purchase
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextThis painting is a rare example of an academic, or trained, artist depicting a folk, or untrained, artist at work. Genre paintings on this scale are rare, and rarer still in King's oeuvre. Although primarily a working portraitist, King painted still lifes, landscapes and genre scenes on different occasions throughout his life. The interior he depicts here shows an occurrence that was very American, the commission of a portrait from one of the many artists of all levels of talent who supported themselves by traveling the country in search of sitters. The interior itself however, is very un-American. It is close to the dark, cavernous interiors of 17th-century Dutch painting. In fact, King owned a print, "The Painter's Studio" by Adriaen Van Ostade, that seems to be the source for this interior. Also Dutch in tradition is the highly-lit focus on the figures, all centered in the fore plane while the sides and back recede in hazy darkness. Another Dutch feature is the detailed still life studies scattered about the interior. The painting is a rare illustration of a once common artistic tradition -- the traveling artist -- in 18th- and 19th-century America. The romanticized, European interior is a continuation of the 18th- century's historical concerns in genre painting, an attitude that was already changing in the contemporary work of William Sidney Mount and E. L. Henry.Exhibition History“Meet Your Neighbors: New England Portraits, Painters and Society, 1790-1850,” Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, MA, April 1, 1992 – January 5, 1993.
“Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art,” Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, August 23 – December 31, 2008; New York State Museum, Albany, NY, September 9, 2009 – January 6, 2010.
“American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity,” Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT, February 17 – May 8, 2017.
“The Art of the Erie Canal,” New York State Museum, Albany, NY, April 28 – September 23, 2018.
"Rufus Porter's Curious World," Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, December 12, 2019 - May 31, 2020.
BibliographySelections from the Collections of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, vol. VI (auct. cat. New York, NY, 1964-1965), cat. no. 26, ill.
Cosentino, Andrew J., “Charles Bird King: An Appreciation,” in American Art Journal, Vol. VI, No. 1 (May 1974), p. 61, fig. 11, ill.
Dinnerstein, Lois, “Artists in Their Studios,” in American Heritage, Vol. 34, No. 2 (February/ March, 1983), p. 81, ill.
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