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Genre paintings on this scale are rare, and rarer still in King’s body of work. Although primarily a portraitist, King painted still lifes, landscapes, and genre scenes on different occasions throughout his life.
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
DimensionsFramed: 53 1/4 × 65 1/2 × 3 in. (135.3 × 166.4 × 7.6 cm)
Sight: 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 is a rare example of an academic, or trained, artist depicting a folk, or untrained, artist at work. This interior shows a typical 19th-century American activity in a non-American setting. A sitter is commissioning a portrait from one of the many artists traveling the country in search of work but is in a room more similar 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 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.Genre paintings on this scale are rare, and rarer still in King’s body of work. Although primarily a portraitist, King painted still lifes, landscapes, and genre scenes on different occasions throughout his life.
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.
On View
Not on viewca. 1831
c. 1897-1900
