Henry Inman
Henry Inman
1801 - 1846
American painter. The son of an English land agent who had immigrated to America in 1792, he studied under an itinerant drawing-master before moving to New York with his family in 1812. Two years later he obtained an apprenticeship with the city’s leading portrait painter, JOHN WESLEY JARVIS, drawn to the artist not only for his skill but also for his collection of pictures, which at that time included Adolf Ulric Wertmüller’s Danaë and the Shower of Gold (1787; Stockholm, Nmus.). Inman worked closely with Jarvis, eventually accompanying him on his travels and serving more as a collaborator than an apprentice. Within this partnership Inman established a speciality in miniature painting. In 1823 he set up his own practice in New York and ceded miniature painting to his student and eventual partner, Thomas Seir Cummings (1804–94; see fig.).
Instrumental in founding the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN in New York in 1825, Inman became vice-president of the new organization and found himself at the centre of the so-called ‘Knickerbocker society’, New York’s rapidly developing cultural circle. He began to receive portrait commissions from prominent families and city government but also painted literary, historical, and genre subjects, such as Young Fisherman (1829–30; New York, Met.). Many of these were engraved for illustration in journals and popular gift books, furthering his renown. He moved to Philadelphia in 1831 and joined the engraver Cephas G. Childs (1793–1871) as a partner in the lithographic firm Childs & Inman, providing meticulously drafted designs in pencil and watercolour that were reproduced by the firm’s talented lithographer, Albert Newsam (1809–64), for example Mount Vernon (1832; see 1987 exh. cat., p. 175). He continued to paint portraits despite the presence of Thomas Sully, Philadelphia’s reigning artist and an acknowledged master of women’s portraits. Inman had greater success with male sitters, such as John Marshall (1831; Philadelphia, PA, Bar Assoc.), whom he portrayed with quiet yet forceful dignity, without the suave elegance of Sully’s style.
After three years in Philadelphia, Inman returned to New York and from 1834 to 1839 was at the height of his career. For a while he was New York’s leading portrait painter, yet he decried the public’s ‘rage for portraits’, which prevented artists from exercising their full powers. Like Sully in Philadelphia, Inman in New York was called ‘the American Lawrence’, in reference to the English portrait painter THOMAS LAWRENCE. His romantic style is marked by softened contours and a restrained brush, and he often gave his sitters a genial expression or glint of humour. His propensity towards sweetness in depictions of women and children, such as Georgianna Buckham and her Mother (1839; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), rarely slipped into sentimentality, a quality that never coloured his portraits of men, which are painted with vigour if not bravura (e.g. Richard Channing Moore, c. 1844; priv. col., see 1987 exh. cat., p. 24; see also Henry G. Stebbins). His later subjects exhibit a clarified style that anticipated the insistent materiality of mid-19th-century American portraiture and the rise of a photographic standard of naturalism.
Financial reverses and deteriorating health contributed to a decline in Inman’s productivity in his later years. Although no longer prosperous, he continued to paint, creating some of his most accomplished and beautiful works, including Angelica Singleton Van Buren (1842; Washington, DC, White House Col.), and returning to literary compositions and such genre subjects as Mumble the Peg (1842; Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.). In 1844 he travelled to England, briefly reviving his spirits and health. After painting several portraits and visiting William Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, Cumbria, Inman considered remaining in London to pursue his career. He returned to New York in 1845, however, and died the following year. [Sally Mills. "Inman, Henry." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T041351.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
