File:American painters- with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood (1879) (14767411491).jpg

Identifier: americanpainters00shel (find matches)
Title: American painters: with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Sheldon, George William, 1843-1914
Subjects: Painters Painting, American
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ecution will bear any technical criticism. In Paisley, Scotland, in the year 1822, Mr. William Hart was born. Atthe age of nine he was brought to this country by his parents, who madetheir new home in Albany, New York, and apprenticed their son to a coach-maker. It was as a decorator of panels in the shop of this mechanic thatMr. Hart made his first public appearance as a painter. For several years hecontinued in the same modest business. Soon success encouraged him towiden the field of his labors, and he began to sketch from Nature and to dec-orate window-shades. In his eighteenth year he was graduated a portrait-painter. His prices were five dollars a head; his studio was in his fatherswood-shed in the neighboring city of Troy. His first fee of five dollars, hesays, made him feel prouder than he has ever felt since on similar occasions. The daguerreotype, the ambrotype, and the photograph, being at that timeunknown, and the liking for likenesses of the human face being not less real
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w X >•a Xh<0. Id Ih WILLI A M II ART. 85 nor common than in later years, Mr. Hart found opportunities for paintingmany portraits; but, as the production of every portrait consumed severaldays, he did not get rich fast. He found that five days work, for instance,yielded him at once a revenue of precisely five dollars whenever his customerwas prompt in making payment; and it did not take him long to calculate thepossibilities of his progression in this financial direction. He began to try hisbrush on landscapes, and to sell them for cash or by barter. As his facilityand skill increased, he increased the price of his portraits. He went to Michi-gan and furnished the inhabitants of that young and thriving State with veri-similitudes of their features and figures at twenty-five dollars an inhabitant,boarding around among his patrons, and thus killing two birds with onestone. This he did for three years, but at the expiration of that time, havingfailed to become acclimatized suffici

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