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Art and Architecture

Where Artists Found a Home

As Kentucky moved from its frontier phase into statehood and the nineteenth century, funds and time were available for residents to begin thinking of art. Because Kentuckians were surrounded by beautiful natural scenes in their daily lives, landscape art was not in high demand. In addition, before the invention of photography, the primary way someone could preserve a likeness was through portraiture, miniatures, or silhouettes. The production of such images increased throughout the early nineteenth century, with the greatest increase following the War of 1812. Kentuckians rarely traveled to the urban centers of the East to be immortalized by well-known portrait artists like Gilbert Stuart or Thomas Sully; therefore, many of the portraits that graced the homes of nineteenth-century Kentucky were created by itinerant artists and local artists in residence. Some of these painters had questionable skills, and their names are lost. But a number of artists, some native to the state, demonstrated a real talent.¹

With the first college and library west of the Alleghenies as well as an amateur theater company established by 1808, Lexington was the center of the arts community for the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The first painter of record in Kentucky is William West, who arrived in Lexington in 1788. English-born portrait artist George Jacob Beck came to Lexington with his wife, Mary Menessier Beck, around 1805. The two taught at the Lexington Female Seminary and later opened their own school. Beck used teaching to supplement his portraiture business.² Asa Park arrived in Lexington from Virginia in the early nineteenth century. He apparently had studied with Gilbert Stuart as well as with ornamental painter John R. Penniman. Park painted portraits, but he did many still-life paintings of fruit and flowers. Decorative painting was probably also a part of his business, and he painted an eagle transparency in the Lexington Masonic Hall for the 1825 visit of Lafayette.³

The painter with the most influence on the art scene in the early nineteenth century was Kentucky native Matthew Harris Jouett. Born in Mercer County on April 22, 1788, Jouett was the son of Captain John “Jack” Jouett Jr. and Sallie Robards. The Jouetts moved to Kentucky in 1784 from Virginia, and Matthew was the third of twelve children born to the couple. Jack Jouett was known as the “Paul Revere of the South” for his role in riding six miles to Charlottesville to warn Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of an impending British attack in June 1781.⁴ Matthew exhibited artistic ability as a child, and he graduated from Transylvania University in 1808. Jack wanted his son to become a lawyer, and Matthew studied law with Judge George M. Bibb, the chief justice of the Appellate Court of Kentucky, in Frankfort for one year before moving to Lexington to open his own practice. He married Margaret Henderson Allen on May 25, 1812, and the two would go on to have nine children. Jouett was practicing law when the War of 1812 broke out, and he left his practice to enlist in the Third Mounted Regiment of Kentucky Volunteers. He was made a first lieutenant and paymaster of the Twenty-eighth U.S. Infantry and was promoted to the rank of captain by July 1814. He commanded a company and entertained his fellow officers with charcoal drawings of characters on drumheads. He later turned many of the sketches that he made during this period into portraits. These included three men killed at the Battle of the River Raisin: Colonel John Allen, Captain Nathaniel G. S. Hart, and Captain Paschal Hickman. While doing his job as paymaster, Jouett lost the payrolls and other important papers during a battle. Although the loss could be blamed on the tumult and chaos of battle, he felt responsible and worked for the rest of his life to pay back the six thousand dollars lost.⁵ He resigned on January 20, 1815.

After his service in the army, Jouett returned to Lexington determined to become a full-time portrait painter and miniaturist. His father is reported to have said: “I sent Matthew to college to make a gentleman of him, and he has turned out to be nothing but a damned sign painter!”⁶ But Jouett did well and could paint three portraits a week for twenty-five dollars each. In June 1816, he traveled to Philadelphia and then to Boston to study with the leading American portrait artist, Gilbert Stuart. Jouett and Stuart got along well, and Stuart called Jouett “Kentucky” for the rest of his life. For his part, Jouett was an attentive student who kept a notebook with every comment made by his teacher during his four-month period of training. Stuart had an obvious influence on Jouett's style that can be seen in his bust portraits after 1816. When Jouett returned to Lexington, he opened a studio in the Kentucky Hotel on Short Street and charged fifty dollars a portrait. Jouett's portraiture style at this time followed Stuart's emphasis on painting subjects as they truly were and not as they wished to be. The result is that much of Jouett's work possesses facial exactness with less detailed backgrounds.⁷

While in Boston, Jouett made copies of famous portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that he sold to local citizens to supplement his own portraiture work. The sale of copies of famous works was common throughout the West to satisfy a public that wanted pictures of any kind. Jouett is known to have copied the Washington and Jefferson portraits as well as ones of Isaac Shelby, Henry Clay, and George Rogers Clark. But the amount of work available in central Kentucky was not enough to support his family, and each winter until his death in 1827 he traveled south to paint the well-to-do families of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. Most of his work consists of bust portraits, and he is credited with one of the best images of a young Henry Clay, which was painted around 1818. Jouett painted many prominent Kentuckians of his day, including Isaac Shelby, Isham Crittenden, Asa Blanchard, Robert Crittenden, Dr. Horace Holley, and Henry Clay (several times).⁸

One of the largest and the best documented of Jouett's works is his full-length portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette commissioned by the Kentucky state legislature in January 1825. The legislature hoped to preserve General Lafayette's image while he made his grand tour of the United States. In choosing Jouett, it entrusted a native son with an extremely important task, and his selection honored his reputation in the state. The legislative act described the artist as “a man born and nurtured in Kentucky, grown in its forests and canebreaks, [who] by force of his native genius, exerted under the benign influence of free government and equal rights, has distinguished himself in the art of painting.”⁹ Jouett would be paid fifteen hundred dollars for the large portrait, which he hoped to paint from life. He prepared for a trip to Washington, DC, to meet with Lafayette for a portrait sitting. On November 25, 1825, in a letter to Governor Joseph Desha, Jouett described what happened next: “Hearing of the resolution, and of my expected visit to the City, the General, in conversation with Mr. Clay, a few days previous to his departure, after regretting the necessity of his absence, recommended, that in the event of my coming on, I should make a copy of the picture then in the possession of Congress, and that he would, if necessary, sit for me to have it retouched, when he came on to Kentucky.”¹⁰ Jouett arrived in the capital and found that the portrait Lafayette referred to was a full-length one by the Dutch artist Ary Scheffer that hung in the Capitol Rotunda. Because Congress was in session, the portrait could not be taken down, and Jouett had to work many days in the Rotunda taking notes and making a copy. After finishing, he traveled to Philadelphia and then to Mount Vernon, where he made a sketch of Washington's tomb. Lafayette sat for the artist in his studio for one hour on May 17, 1825, when he visited Lexington, and Jouett worked on the details of the face and head. Jouett made clear to Governor Desha that his work was a copy of another portrait, but he believed “that the people of Kentucky will be satisfied with the success with which I have executed the task imposed upon me.” Jouett's goal was fully realized; the portrait hung behind the chair of the speaker of the House of Representatives and still hangs today in the old state capitol.¹¹

Jouett was a prolific painter with 334 portraits or miniatures attributed to him, and he dominated the Lexington art scene. But his influence extended well beyond his own work. Jouett was a well-liked and generous man. He exhibited art in his studio to raise money for the Lexington Hospital, and he often encouraged young artists by exhibiting their work. Just as Gilbert Stuart had encouraged his own development, Jouett opened his studio to artists, with whom he shared his talent. He opened a second studio in Louisville in 1826, and, after a long period of painting in the city, he returned to his Lexington home in the summer of 1827 with a fever, dying there on August 10, 1827. He was buried in his wife's family plot but was moved to the Louisville Cave Hill Cemetery at the turn of the century. Well-known within the state, Jouett did not receive national recognition until the exhibition of his portraits of General Charles Scott and John Grimes (one of Jouett's students) at the 1893 Chicago Exposition.¹²

Joseph H. Bush was another native Kentucky artist who worked successfully in the state following the death of Jouett. The son of Philip Bush Jr. and Elizabeth Palmer, he was probably born in Mercer County sometime between 1794 and 1800. In 1802, Philip Bush Jr. owned a tavern in Frankfort that his wife ran after his death in 1807. Joseph Bush showed an interest in and talent for art at an early age, and his father had done some oil portraits for the family. When Bush was around the age of seventeen or eighteen, his talents came to the attention of Henry Clay. Clay encouraged Bush to go to Philadelphia to work with Thomas Sully. Bush did go to Philadelphia and exhibited one of his portraits at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, but he had difficulty procuring funds for his living expenses and education. Records indicate that Clay authorized his bankers to loan Bush money, and Bush then had trouble repaying it. He wrote a letter to Clay in June 1817 from Philadelphia expressing his intent to repay the loan as soon as he received a settlement from his grandfather's estate. He also wrote that he had prepared several paintings for exhibit in “the West” with the intention of selling them. In 1818, Matthew Jouett exhibited two of Bush's works in his gallery studio to help fund Bush's educational pursuits.¹³

Bush opened his own studio in Frankfort in 1818. That year he painted an aging George Rogers Clark and William Clark. His portrait of George Rogers Clark has been described as “immediately striking.”¹⁴ The work reveals a man on whom illness and age have exacted a heavy toll. In 1819, he opened a studio in Louisville, but he also lived for a time in Lexington and Cincinnati. Just as Jouett had been forced to leave Kentucky to earn enough as an artist, Bush also traveled outside the state in the winter months. He went to plantations in New Orleans, Natchez, and Vicks-burg where he would spend weeks painting whole families. The work paid well, and living expenses were covered while in residence. Bush was in high demand in the South, and he continued these trips to Louisiana and Mississippi annually until the Civil War. Following the overall trend in art and architecture in the nineteenth century, his style of painting took on a more romantic influence in the 1830s. The artist used more shading; his backgrounds were darker, and he began to do group portraits. His paintings of children exhibited full lips and large eyes, a characteristic of Thomas Sully's work. In the 1840s, Bush painted Henry Clay, General Winfield Scott, and Zachary Taylor. The Taylor portrait is considered one of his best for it is both realistic and romantic as the uniformed general stands with his hand on his sword ready to fight as the sun sets on his military career; it hangs in the White House.¹⁵

Bush was well paid for his work since he charged $100-$150 for a bust portrait. In later years, he did portraits from daguerreotypes, an invention that would eventually put many portrait artists out of business. The first popular form of photography, the daguerreotype was perfected by Frenchman Louis J. M. Daguerre in 1839. The specially treated silver-plated sheet of copper was placed inside a camera and exposed to light. Originally the time of exposure was anywhere from five to forty minutes, but eventually the process was reduced to under one minute. Once removed from the camera and treated with mercury vapors, the sheet revealed a detailed image that was made permanent with sodium thiosulfate. The one drawback of the daguerreotype is that no negative was created. The process continued in popularity in the United States throughout the 1840s and 1850s until other photographic advances replaced it.¹⁶ Bush provided families with the copies they so desired by painting from daguerreotypes. One daguerreotype portrait of Cowles Green Meade was made two years after the man had died. His wife was so impressed with the lifelike painting that she commissioned Bush to paint her and five other members of her family. His professional success and effective money management allowed Bush to do well throughout his lifetime until his death at his brother's Lexington home on January 11, 1865.¹⁷

One of the young artists who received encouragement and early training from Jouett and also filled the void after his death was Oliver Frazer. Frazer was born February 4, 1808, in Fayette County. His father, Alexander Frazer, had fled Ireland during the revolutionary upheavals and came with his brother to Kentucky, where both were silversmiths. Alexander married Nancy Oliver in 1804, and they had two sons before his death in 1810. Oliver Frazer's wealthy bachelor uncle then directed the education of his nephews, and Oliver was sent to a Lexington school. As a boy, he had more interest in art than scholarship, but he finished his course of learning at age seventeen. He then went to study with Matthew Jouett at his Lexington studio. After several months, Jouett encouraged the young man to travel to Philadelphia to study with Thomas Sully. Frazer made the trip in 1828 after Jouett's death. He found the city disagreeable, however, and was not impressed by the types of art that he found. Sometime around 1830, he returned to Lexington and began to paint portraits.¹⁸

Frazer left the United States in May 1834 to study art in France. During his time in Paris, he studied with Baron Antoine-Jean Gros and Thomas Couture, and he painted the actor Edwin Forrest, with whom he had become friends. Not satisfied with French portraiture, Frazer left France and traveled through Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and England in 1835-1836. In 1837, he went back to Paris before returning to Lexington in 1838. It is at this time that he painted the self-portrait that is considered one of his finest works. He painted portraits for several members of Isaac Shelby's family, Henry Clay Jr. and his wife, Julia Prather, Richard H. Menefee, Joel Tanner Hart, Lucretia Hart Clay (twice), and Henry Clay (four times). Henry Clay remarked that the times he sat for Frazer were the most relaxed because the artist was very entertaining. Frazer charged fifty dollars a portrait after 1838, but he did not produce the volume of work that Jouett had. Frazer was very critical of his own work, and he liked to wait for inspiration before painting.¹⁹

The family of Colonel William Robertson McKee, who had been killed at the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847, commissioned Frazer to paint his portrait from memory. Before Frazer had completed the picture, the family viewed the portrait and wanted to take it home. Frazer refused, but at the family's insistence a compromise was reached. The portrait would be taken to the family's home and placed in a chair with drapes around it to give the illusion of McKee sitting in the parlor. The family would wait for the reaction of McKee's young daughter, Mattie, when she returned from school. When Mattie returned and saw the image of her dead father in the parlor, she ran to her mother and said, “Mamma, Mamma, I always said that my papa would come home again.” Frazer conceded and allowed the family to keep the portrait.²⁰

The playful and entertaining nature of Frazer can be seen in another anecdote from his time in Lexington. A young apprentice to a house painter came to Frazer to ask if the artist would take a look at his work and offer advice on a future as a portrait artist. Frazer agreed and told the young man to bring his work to his studio, where he could look at it. When the man arrived, he placed his work on the floor to wait for Frazer's opinion. In the meantime, a friend of Frazer's arrived at the studio with his Newfoundland dog. The dog looked at the apprentice's portrait on the floor, growled, and pushed the portrait with his paw. Horrified, the young man picked up his work and left the studio. Frazer then turned to his dog-owning friend and reportedly asked to buy the dog, saying: “He is the smartest dog I ever saw; he is a fine art critic—he can tell a daub at first sight.”²¹ As he grew older, Frazer began to lose his eyesight, and he was eventually forced to give up painting. He died April 9, 1864, at his home, Eothen, in Fayette County. His funeral was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Lexington, and he was buried in Lexington Cemetery.²²

As he worked in Kentucky, Frazer followed Jouett's lead and encouraged other young artists within the state. Samuel Woodson Price, who was born in Nicholasville on August 5, 1828, had displayed artistic talent from a young age. Not content to do just pencil and charcoal sketches, Price desired to use colors but could not afford them. The death of a traveling painter on the road near Nicholasville led to the public sale of his materials. The operator of the local hotel, Jefferson Brown, purchased the items and gave them to Price. In addition, Brown offered Price space in his hotel to open a studio, and, at fourteen years of age, Samuel Price spent his Saturdays and free hours painting. His father was wary of these activities and enrolled his son in the Nicholasville Academy and then Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) near Frankfort. Price realized that he preferred drawing to marching, returned to the study of art, and went to Louisville to be taught by William Reading, who was visiting the city doing oil portraits. Price then moved to Lexington and rented a room near Oliver Frazer's studio in order to study with the artist.²³

Frazer took very few students, but he saw Price's talents and worked with him every day. He suggested that Price try painting oil portraits, and his first under the direction of Frazer was of James Harvey, who had served in the Mexican War. Harvey, Frazer, and George Jouett, son of Matthew Jouett, were pleased with the outcome. At Frazer's prompting, Price went to New York City in 1848 and studied for five months at the School of Design. He returned to Lexington in 1849 and opened his own studio, where he charged fifty dollars a portrait. George Jouett suggested to Price that he paint William “King” Solomon, the hero of the 1833 cholera epidemic. Solomon, an often-drunk laborer, had drunk whiskey instead of water during the epidemic and escaped falling ill. Because most residents of the city fled, few remained to bury those who died. Solomon dug graves and buried the bodies in the nearly empty city. When Price approached him with the idea in 1849, seventy-four-year-old Solomon initially refused, but he finally consented to the portrait on the condition that he receive his favorite whiskey and cigars during the sittings. An exhibition of the completed portrait was so popular that it had to be moved to the dining room of the Phoenix Hotel. When it was exhibited at a mechanics' fair in Louisville in the fall of 1853, the Louisville Journal reported: “You can see the whiskey in every feature of the old fellow, and you feel that you are looking at one who would wish no better heaven than one where whiskey was free, and Kentucky segars [sic] could be picked up without care or trouble.”²⁴ Price's reputation was sealed, and he now had more work than he could complete.

In 1851, Price moved to Louisville and found enough work to last several years. It was here that he met Mary Frances Thompson, whom on May 26, 1853, he later married. But one year into his marriage he realized that he could not make enough money to support a family in Kentucky. Most artists in the nineteenth century were forced into itinerant work in order to earn enough money. In Kentucky, artists could not find work during the winter months, when the weather made travel difficult and there were fewer opportunities for community socializing. Price did what most Kentucky artists did; he traveled through Tennessee and further south painting portraits. In 1856, he traveled to Buffalo, New York, where he did a three-quarter-length portrait of Millard Fillmore, but, in 1859, he moved back to Lexington because he believed that the town provided the best environment for his painting.²⁵

William Edward West, born in central Kentucky in 1788, left Kentucky to study with Thomas Sully in Philadelphia and then traveled to Natchez, Mississippi, to pursue portraiture. In 1819, he left for Europe, where he lived for nineteen years. While in Italy, he became friends with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. West's portrait of Lord Byron garnered international recognition, and West exhibited several works at the Royal Academy in London in 1826 and 1833.²⁶

Popular art during the nineteenth century extended beyond portraits from artists such as Jouett, Bush, and Frazer. A market for sports painting existed, and the Swiss artist Edward Troye was the premier painter in the genre. Troye, born Edouard de Troy to an artistic family in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 12, 1808, came to the United States in 1831. He began working for Sartain's magazine painting animals. He traveled throughout the South on staff assignment for the publication, but he quickly gave up the job because private commissions were more lucrative. He was at his best when he painted American thoroughbred horses, and his work is the only record of many champion horses before the age of photography. In the 1830s, his reputation grew, and horse owners throughout the country sought his services to immortalize their prize possessions. Often these proud livestock owners commissioned Troye to paint animals of lesser value that had some personal or emotional significance for them. He kept no record of the works that he did, and the result is that the subjects of much of his work remain unidentified. He began painting what was supposed to be a series of one hundred purebred livestock prints for the Kentucky Stock Book in 1837, but the work was never published, and only thirty-one of the images he produced remain in lithograph form.²⁷ Twenty-one of Troye's paintings also appeared as engravings in the pages of the racing periodical the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. These portraits, accompanied by descriptions of pedigree and performance, helped garner Troye renown and commissions.²⁸

While commissioned by John R. Spann to paint his horse Bertrand in Kentucky, Troye met Robert Aitcheson Alexander of Woodburn Farm in Woodford County. Woodburn Farm was well-known for producing fine thoroughbreds, trotting horses, and shorthorn cattle. Troye spent months on the farm painting the livestock and the Alexander family. He also became acquainted with Cornelia Ann Van de Graaf of Scott County, whom he married at her home on July 16, 1839. After the marriage, Cornelia continued to live with her family as Troye traveled up and down the Mississippi River painting livestock. In 1844, Troye and his wife purchased a farm in McCracken County, but farming apparently did not suit him, and the land was sold in 1847. It appears that the Alexander family also introduced Troye to another Kentuckian who would have a significant impact on the artist's career. Alexander Keene Richards owned Blue Grass Park near Georgetown and a plantation in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Richards, who bred thoroughbreds, believed that Kentucky stock could be improved through the addition of bloodlines from Arabia. In 1855, Richards convinced Troye to leave a teaching position he had held since 1849 at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, to travel to the Middle East and Europe in search of stock and fine art. During the trip, Troye painted Arabian horses, Damascus cattle, and landscapes of religious sites. One of his best works from the trip is Dead Sea, which he painted in thirteen days on-site while living in tents. He returned to New York City in January 1857 and later copied and sold several of the paintings.²⁹

Although he was best known for his paintings of animals, Troye also did portraiture. One of the best of these is a life-size portrait of General Win-field Scott, painted in Kentucky. Scott was a hero of the Mexican War and the highest-ranking general in the army—he was very highly respected. He came to Lexington in the spring of 1861 to sit for Troye at Alexander Richards's Blue Grass Park. An outside tent was erected as a studio for the seven-by-nine-and-a-half-foot equestrian portrait. Scott wore his military uniform and sat on a stallion sired by the famous horse Glencoe. The portrait had been commissioned by the Virginia Military Institute, but, when the school could not pay the several thousand dollars owed, it was returned to Troye. The Civil War made Troye's work difficult, as it did for most involved in artistic endeavors. He found little work and complained of the “breaking up of the great southern studs.”³⁰ He left the United States and traveled through Europe painting. The family returned to Kentucky and Richards's Blue Grass Park in 1863, and they remained there or on the Alexanders' Woodburn Farm for the duration of the war. During this period, Troye painted two trotting horses, Abdallah and Bay Chief, who were later killed by Sue Mundy and his guerrillas when the Woodburn Farm was raided on February 2, 1865. He continued working until unsteady hands and failing eyesight forced him to stop. Troye died of pneumonia at Blue Grass Park on July 25, 1874, and was buried in the Georgetown Cemetery.³¹ Troye's work, which he almost always signed, appeared in the American Turf Register, the first racing periodical in the United States. The first sports magazine in the country, Spirit of the Times, also used many of his images, which made him “the foremost American sports painter” in the nineteenth century.³² Kentucky's burgeoning horse industry and trade provided Troye with subjects, connections, and friendships, with lasting results.

Another foreign-born artist whose time in Kentucky would leave a lasting impression on the art world was John James Audubon. Born April 26, 1785, in Haiti, Jean-Jacques Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French naval officer and merchant and his mistress. His mother died a few months after his birth, and at age four and a half Audubon went to France and was reared by his father's wife, who always treated him affectionately. His father wanted him to become a naval officer, but he left naval school after three years. He came to the United States in 1803 to manage his father's farm in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and he met his future wife, Lucy, at the nearby Bakewell estate in January 1804. The young man had already begun sketching birds in France, and the allure of the woods and fields surrounding him led the overseer of the farm to conclude that he was lazy and worthless. The two men did not get along, and Audubon returned to France with complaints about the overseer that he aired to his father. Not wholly buying in to either man's side of the story, his father returned him to the United States with a mentor, Ferdinand Rozier. The pair arrived in the United States on May 28, 1806, and from this time forward Audubon referred to himself by the anglicized name John James Audubon.³³

After spending time working in a countinghouse in New York, Audubon and Rozier decided to travel west and open a general store in the frontier town of Louisville, Kentucky. The men received credit to purchase goods for the store from the family of Audubon's fiancée, Lucy Bakewell, and the two men traveled from Pennsylvania on a flatboat. Louisville in 1807 had a population of thirteen hundred, and the two men lived in the Indian Queen Hotel while setting up shop. Audubon found friends among the French men and women who had settled a few miles below the falls at Shippingport. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1808 to marry Lucy, whom he then brought to Louisville. He wrote of the couple's reception in his Ornithological Biography: “No sooner had we landed, and made our intention of remaining, than we were introduced to the principal inhabitants of the place and its vicinity, although we had not brought a single letter of introduction, and could not but see, from their unremitting kindness, that the Virginian spirit of hospitality displayed itself in all the words and actions of our newly-formed friends.” The couple continued to live in the Indian Queen, and their first child, Victor Gifford Audubon, was born there on June 12, 1809.³⁴ Lucy described Louisville to a cousin in a letter shortly after her arrival: “I cannot quite tell how I shall like Louisville as I have only been here three weeks and have not yet got a house; but I have received every attention from the inhabitants…. Most houses here have gardens adjoining, and some of them are very prettily laid out indeed. Vegetation is a month or six weeks forwarder here than in Pennsylvania or York State. I am very sorry there is no Library here or book store of any kind for I have very few of my own and as Mr. Audubon is constantly at the store I should often enjoy a book very much whilst I am alone.”³⁵

Audubon produced some of his best studies of birds during these early years in Louisville. His works on the orchard oriole, Carolina parakeet, kingfisher, whippoorwill, and nighthawk date to this period. At the time, Audubon had no plans to publish his work, and the drawings he produced underwent constant revision. Just as the overseer on the Pennsylvania farm had complained that Audubon preferred hunting and drawing to farmwork, Rozier found his business partner spending more time visiting friends, hunting, and sketching than working in the store. However, the two men seemed to work well together and avoided quarrels. Business was good in the growing river town, and Lucy had established friendships in Shippingport. A visit to Louisville from Scottish ornithologist Alexander Wilson opened Audubon's mind to the possibilities of his artistic talents. Wilson was traveling throughout the United States looking for new species to sketch as well as lining up paid subscriptions for his published work. Audubon examined some of Wilson's work, and he shared a few of his own drawings, which he believed superior to the Scotsman's. This meeting “revealed to Audubon for the first time the noble purpose of a systematic study of North American birds.”³⁶ While he continued to help run the store with Rozier, Audubon worked very hard on becoming a true naturalist and began to learn the Latin names and orders for birds.³⁷

Also in 1810, Rozier convinced Audubon to move their business further west to Henderson, Kentucky. After a visit there, Audubon agreed, in part because the much-smaller town had more wildlife and was situated along the north/south migration path for many more birds than Louisville. The business partners opened a store in the front of a log cabin near the river. The Audubon family lived in the back portion of the cabin, and Rozier boarded with them. Eventually, the Audubons moved in with Dr. Adam Rankin's family, and Lucy began to tutor some of their thirteen children. Dr. Rankin was a prominent physician and a leader in the community. A few months later, Rozier, still restless in Henderson, pushed for the pair to move their business even further west to Missouri. Audubon traveled with Rozier to scout the possibilities, but he found the Louisiana Territory not to his liking. In 1811, their partnership was dissolved. Rozier remained in Missouri and opened his own store, while Audubon returned to Henderson. He faced somewhat of a crisis concerning what direction his life should take. An artist at heart, Audubon faced the same difficulty as others who attempted to earn a living in artistic endeavors on the frontier—there was little money in art. As he spent time hunting and sketching more of the wildlife, Audubon realized that the only business he really understood was trade. He decided to return to Louisville and purchase more items for his Henderson store.³⁸

Louisville had changed in the short time Audubon had been away. He found the town too large and too crowded. He returned to Henderson in 1812 and reopened the store. The family moved into their own home; a second son, John Woodhouse Audubon, was born on November 30, 1812, and the business was fairly successful for the first few years. A daughter, Lucy, was added to the family in December 1814, and Audubon made plans with his brother-in-law, Thomas Bakewell, to build steam-powered grist-and sawmills on leased land near the river. During this time, the Audubons often boarded visitors to Henderson. Among them were Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, a professor of natural history at Transylvania University, who met Audubon in the late summer of 1818. Rafinesque was traveling the Ohio River Valley in search of new flora and fauna, and friends in Louisville suggested that he visit Audubon in Henderson. Audubon wrote about their meeting in his Ornithological Biography. Rafinesque's odd appearance—he wore loose, worn clothing in combination with a long beard and long hair—created quite a scene, and Audubon recognized a certain naïveté in the man that he quickly took advantage of. Rafinesque found interest in the plants and shrubs that Audubon drew his birds sitting on. When Audubon shared a plant with him that he was not familiar with, the naturalist questioned whether it was real. Audubon took him to the plant growing on the riverbank, and Rafinesque danced delightedly at this new discovery. Rafinesque stayed with the Audubons, and, late one night after the family had retired, Audubon heard a ruckus in his room. Rushing to the naturalist's door, Audubon discovered his guest “running about the room naked, holding the handle of [Audubon's] favourite violin, the body of which he had battered to pieces against the walls in attempting to kill the bats which had entered by the open window, probably attracted by the insects flying around his candle.” After exhausting himself in the attack, Rafinesque asked Audubon to capture a specimen for him. Audubon obliged and left Rafinesque in a room strewn with plant samples and dead bats. Soon the two men went on treks through the woods, including one in a thunderstorm through a canebreak in which Audubon pretended to be lost for hours. Audubon also shared with Rafinesque several drawings of fish that can be described only as coming from his own imagination. As with the earlier drawing of the plant, Audubon assured Rafinesque of the authenticity of these drawings, though he could not produce a live (or dead) example. Rafinesque took Audubon at his word and later published them in his own work, and he received a great deal of ridicule for his error. Audubon was known for his exaggerations. He often told stories of his trips that stretched credulity, and he had found an easy mark in Rafinesque. The problem with Audubon's exaggerations is that they also harmed his own future work. Many critics questioned his representations and written descriptions of birds, although a well-trained ornithologist would recognize his accuracy.³⁹

Audubon's fortunes had begun to change around this time, and this too might have played a role in his callous treatment of Rafinesque. His daughter Lucy, a sickly child, died in 1817, and the mills turned into a bad business decision. Audubon's debts began to mount. His brother-in-law, Thomas Bakewell, had invested in a steamboat operated by Samuel Bowen. Bakewell signed over Bowen's promissory note worth $4,250 to Audubon for payment of debts he owed. When Audubon attempted to seek repayment for the note in April 1819, he discovered that Bowen had skipped town and headed to New Orleans in the boat. Audubon pursued the man with the hope of repossessing the steamboat but arrived in New Orleans too late. Bowen had given the boat to other creditors to cover his debts. Audubon filed charges for nonpayment and fraud in the courts, but the case was dismissed. Before he returned to Henderson, Audubon informed many residents of New Orleans that Bowen was a thief, and, thus, he became the target of Bowen's anger and bitterness. Bowen made threats that he would return to Henderson and beat Audubon for heaping these troubles on him. Bowen appeared one morning as Audubon was walking to the mill. Because of a recent accident at the steam mill, Audubon had his arm in a sling, but his wife, Lucy, had insisted he carry a dagger for protection. Bowen struck Audubon with a club several times before Audubon managed to stab him with the dagger. The gathered witnesses, who appeared to side with Bowen, chased Audubon down the road. Bowen recovered from his wound and sued Audubon for assault and battery. At the trial, Judge Henry P. Broadnax dismissed the case with the words, “Mr. Audubon, you committed a serious offense—an exceedingly serious offense, sir—in failing to kill the damned rascal.”⁴⁰

Audubon's troubles did not end here, however, and his debts continued to mount. By July 1819, he sold his interest in the steam mill, his Henderson home and all its contents, land, and seven slaves to a Louisville friend, and paid the debts as best he could. He returned to Louisville, where claims followed him, and he was jailed for a brief period. A change in Kentucky law allowed him to declare bankruptcy and free himself from the creditors. The family lived with friends while Audubon sought work. His unsuccessful attempts led him back to painting. At first, he painted portraits for free, but he began to charge five dollars a portrait for people he did not know. His reputation slowly grew, and eventually he was sought out to do several deathbed portraits. On one occasion, a family had the body of their dead child exhumed for Audubon to paint. And he continued to paint birds.⁴¹

Audubon managed to make enough money painting portraits and giving art lessons to rent a house for the family, and he and his wife had another daughter, whom they named Rose. But lawsuits followed him to Louisville, and he again found himself unable to provide sufficiently for the family. Rose died and was buried in a pauper's grave. In 1819, the family left Kentucky for Cincinnati, where Audubon took a job as a taxidermist for the Western Museum. He lost that job in 1820, and Lucy began to provide for the family through a teaching job. The couple made the decision that Audubon should finally pursue his work of studying and painting birds fulltime. The hundreds of drawings that he had accumulated throughout the years in Kentucky were revised, and he traveled to other parts of the country painting and doing odd jobs while he completed a study of North American birds. He sought letters of support from well-known citizens to use while traveling, and Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison both obliged. His work came to fruition in 1827-1828 with the publication of the four-volume Birds of America. Still considered an accurate and beautiful study of birds, the work was followed by the five-volume Viviparous Quadrupeds of America (1842-1845). Audubon moved from Ohio to Louisiana in 1820; he was living in New York City when he died on January 27, 1851.⁴²

Joel Tanner Hart, born in Clark County on February 11, 1810, distinguished himself in the medium of sculpture. After working in Bourbon County building stone walls and chimneys, he moved to Lexington at age twenty-one to work in Mahlon Pruden's marble yard carving headstones and monuments. Cincinnati-based sculptor Schobal Vail Clevenger, in Lexington to carve a bust of Henry Clay, encouraged Hart to produce a bust of Cassius M. Clay from life. The result was well received, and Clay ordered a copy of the bust from marble for five hundred dollars. Hart then traveled to the Hermitage to take a likeness of Andrew Jackson. Though Jackson was ill, he agreed to sit for Hart, who was working for a group of Kentuckians. When the bust was completed, Jackson said that he believed it to be a good likeness.⁴³ With the completion of the Clay and Jackson busts, Hart's reputation grew, and he received many commissions.

Hart studied anatomy at Transylvania Medical School in Lexington to improve his technique and created busts of several prominent Kentucky citizens, including John J. Crittenden, Robert Wickliffe, Reverend Alexander Campbell, James Taylor, and Henry Clay. In 1845, Hart exhibited his bust of Cassius Clay in Philadelphia and Richmond, Virginia. He received a commission from the Ladies Clay Association of Richmond to produce a full-length statue of Henry Clay. Hart considered this to be the most important commission of his career, and he received five hundred dollars in advance with the promise of another forty-five hundred dollars on completion. Using casts, measurements, notes on Clay's physical characteristics, and several daguerrotypes, Hart planned to create a model of Clay in Lexington and then transport it to Italy for completion in marble. He made several half-size copies of the work that were sold to help finance the trip to Italy.

American artists traveled to Italy for the quality of marble and the chance to study with master sculptors that the United States lacked. Hart, excited by the prospect of not only working in Italy but also studying master sculpture, left for Europe on September 20, 1849. He arrived in Florence in the late fall. He soon realized that, while in Kentucky he had no equal, his training and technique were in need of improvement. He traveled to London for more anatomy classes, and he spent time studying sculptures and paintings throughout Europe as he waited for his Clay model to arrive. When he returned to Florence, word reached him that the ship carrying his model and casts was lost at sea. A second model that Hart had prepared was shipped from Kentucky and took a full year to arrive. In the meantime, he began work on a machine to take precise measurements of subjects. The “pointing instrument,” which he patented in Britain and France, consisted of rings and needles that allowed for speedy and accurate measurements. The workings of his invention proved novel to many, and he was able to sell several marble busts to British patrons at one hundred guineas each to help pay for his expenses while he waited for funds from the Virginia Ladies Clay Association. Hart finished the twelve-and-a-half-foot Clay statue, carved from a block of Carrara marble, in the fall of 1859. Although he resided in Florence for the rest of his life, he returned to the United States in April 1860 for the unveiling of the statue on the grounds of the Virginia capitol in celebration of what would have been Clay's eighty-third birthday on April 12. He traveled the country for eight months and returned to his friends in Kentucky, where Governor Beriah Magoffin held a banquet in his honor. Hart exhibited several of his busts and small statues in Lexington, where one of his first subjects, Cassius M. Clay, spoke at another banquet. The trip to Kentucky proved financially successful for Hart, who received a ten-thousand-dollar commission to produce a copy of the full-length Henry Clay statue for the Jefferson County Courthouse. In addition, an order was placed by Clay admirers in New Orleans for a bronze copy of the same work. Hart returned to Florence, where he died on March 2, 1877. Although he was originally interred in the English cemetery in Florence next to his friends Elizabeth Barrett Browning and sculptor Hiram Powers, his body was moved to the Frankfort Cemetery by an act of the Kentucky legislature in June 1887.⁴⁴

There were also Kentucky artists who developed their skills in various fields of craftsmanship throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Furniture making was a skilled craft and for many a means of artistic expression. Furniture had to be crafted in Kentucky for many years because of the difficulties in transporting it from the East. Early work sold in Kentucky shops copied the styles popular in England and along the Eastern Seaboard, and the French Empire style found expression in the Federal era. Kentucky had quite a few silversmiths working in the Bluegrass region, in Louisville, and as far west as Glasgow and Russellville. Asa Blanchard, who worked in Lexington, became well-known in the West for his flatware, ladles, and mint julep cups. Many of these early pieces were made from Spanish coins brought from New Orleans, and Blanchard had many apprentices from other states. The Winchester and Garner firm on Mill Street in Lexington operated a large business from 1838 to the Civil War making julep cups, pitchers, and vases that were used as prizes at livestock competitions and races. Julep cups, sometimes called Patrick Henry cups, originated in Virginia and were very popular trophies. Kentuckians would use their prizes to serve the bourbon-based mint julep. Some silversmiths also crafted clocks for sale, but there were several men who specialized in horology during the early nineteenth century. B. B. and T. K. Marsh made mantel and grandfather clocks in Paris, and Thomas Jefferson Shepherd and his brother in Georgetown created brass wall clocks. While these men opened permanent shops, other clockmakers would travel the countryside to find work, much like their artistic counterparts in the world of portraiture. The craftsman might spend weeks with a family in the winter while making the timepiece, as did Ruben Drasdel in 1829 when he built a grandfather clock for Eugene L. Hersperger in Jessamine County.⁴⁵

The development of culture and art in Kentucky is also reflected in nineteenth-century architecture. In the early days of settlement, Kentucky was dominated by log-cabin homes and forts and, later, log-frame houses and stone buildings. These structures were designed and constructed by carpenters, house joiners, and bricklayers. Gentleman architects, like Thomas Jefferson, emerged at the end of the eighteenth century. These men had the time and resources to study architectural theory from popular books, and their designs regularly reflected Renaissance and Palladian principles. The Georgian and Federal styles dominated Kentucky architecture for the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Examples of Georgian architecture include Liberty Hall in Frankfort, Federal Hill in Bardstown, and Ashland in Lexington. The Federal style was seen at Farmington in Louisville and Mt. Airy in Woodford County.⁴⁶

Benjamin Latrobe was the first professional architect to have designs built in the state. In 1811, he designed U.S. senator John Pope's home in Lexington, which introduced Greek Revival elements to local architecture. He worked on remodeling Henry Clay's Ashland, and he designed Bellevue in Newport for General James Taylor. His work was reflected in architectural designs throughout the region. Thomas D. Carneal's work for John S. Gano in Covington and his own home, Elmwood, in Ludlow “reflect the Palladian influences of Latrobe and likely contain information Carneal would have gathered from his no doubt more than casual interest in the building of Taylor's residence.”⁴⁷ Matthew Kennedy, a Virginia native, was the first in the state to describe himself as an architect. In 1814, he designed and built the second Kentucky statehouse, and his plan was chosen over one by Benjamin Latrobe in 1816 for the main building of Transylvania University. After this honor, he had a great deal of work, including the Lexington Masonic Hall and his own residence on Limestone Street in Lexington. He was the “first to develop a distinctive building type in the Bluegrass region.”⁴⁸

In the late 1820s, Gideon Shryock emerged as the premier architect in the state. Shryock, who was born in Lexington in 1802, worked with his father, who was a builder, before traveling in 1823 to Philadelphia, where he apprenticed with Latrobe's student William Strickland. He returned to Kentucky a year later, the first native Kentuckian professionally trained in architecture. In 1827, Shryock's Greek Revival design was chosen for the third Kentucky statehouse. Fashioned after the temple of Athena Polias at Priene, Ionia, it was the first Greek Revival statehouse in the United Sates. The structure, completed in 1830, is renowned for the circular stairways that lead from the foyer to the second floor.⁴⁹ Marble for the columns came from the Grimes Mill quarry in southeast Fayette County, and the marble used for the walls came from Anderson County along the Kentucky River. Blocks of stone were ferried downriver to the state penitentiary, where they were cut and polished by inmates. A story is told that a state penitentiary convict won a pardon from the governor for his design and completion of the stairs. However, examination by trained architects and the testimony of Shryock's son shows that Shryock himself carefully planned the circular stairwells that are built into the wall. His work on the capitol made him the most important architect in Kentucky for the next ten years. After the capitol building was complete, he designed and built Morrison Hall for Transylvania University from 1830 to 1833. He also built the Franklin County Courthouse in Frankfort in 1832 and in early 1835 designed a house for the Frankfort lawyer Orlando Brown. The Brown residence, patterned after an English country home, is the only known residence that Shryock designed. He moved to Louisville in 1835 and began work on his design for the Jefferson County Courthouse. There were problems with this project from the beginning with defective stone and numerous delays. Shryock continued working on it until 1842, when he quit and left the building for another to finish. His last-known completed work was a building for the University of Louisville Medical Department, finished in 1838. Shryock, who had ten children with his wife, Elizabeth Pendleton Bacon, never recovered after the courthouse failure. He was penniless when he died in Louisville in 1880.⁵⁰

With the increase in population and growth of towns, people began to look for well-designed buildings and homes, and the development of turnpikes, and later railroads, facilitated the exchange of ideas and materials. Louisville's position along the Ohio River led to rapid growth, especially after the completion of the Louisville and Portland Canal around the Falls of the Ohio in 1830. As the canal was built, workers discovered that the limestone could be burned, ground, and combined with sand to produce a hydraulic cement that gained national use. Hugh Roland moved from Nashville to Louisville in 1831 and became the first architect to reside in Louisville. He designed the Greek Revival-style Louisville Hotel on Main Street, the first modern hotel in the state. He also designed the earliest-known Gothic structure in the state, the Roman Catholic Chapel of St. Louis, in 1831.⁵¹

A number of foreign-born and-trained architects came to Kentucky and worked in the late 1830s and 1840s. The first was Charles Romanoff Prczriminsky of France. He arrived in the state as a drawing teacher at Bacon College in Georgetown in 1836, and by 1838 he was working at Transylvania University. Prczriminsky designed the Greek Revival and Gothic-style Masonic Hall on Walnut Street in Lexington in 1839, but he left the state in 1840. Major Thomas Lewinski, an Englishman, came to Kentucky to teach modern languages at the University of Louisville in 1838. Lewinski, probably born in 1800 to an English mother and a Polish father, had trained as a Roman Catholic priest, but a stint in the military fighting in Spain and South America led him away from the priesthood. He returned to England and trained to be an architect. He moved to Lexington in 1842 and worked as an architect designing English Regency-style homes for the wealthy of the central Bluegrass region, and he received a commission to build the Madison County Courthouse in 1848. In 1850, he briefly left the Blue-grass region to work as a supervisor of marine hospitals in western Kentucky, Arkansas, and Mississippi, a post he received with help from Henry Clay. Lewinski returned to Lexington in 1853 and began to incorporate Italianate design elements into his traditional Greek Revival style.⁵² He became the “foremost exponent of the Italianate in Central Kentucky”; examples can be seen in Glengarry on Newton Pike, the redesign of Henry Clay's Ashland in Lexington in 1855-1857, Ward Hall in Scott County, and Jacobs Hall at the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville.⁵³

By the 1850s, innovations and improvements in building materials created a real need for professional architects. Lumber was now mass-produced with machines, and the mass production of nails and the use of cast iron and terra cotta allowed for buildings to expand beyond the usual two stories. Isaiah Rogers, a Massachusetts native considered the father of the American hotel, came to Kentucky in 1852 to build a hotel for legislators in Frankfort. Rogers's apprentice, Irish-born Henry Whitestone, supervised the project in Frankfort while Rogers worked in Cincinnati. Rogers designed the first five-story buildings in the state, the Newcomb and Alexander buildings on Main Street in Louisville, and he drew the plans for the rebuilding of the Louisville Hotel after it was destroyed by fire in 1853. Whitestone opened his own firm in 1857 and became the premier architect of the city into the 1880s.⁵⁴

Antebellum artists and architects of Kentucky studied under several of the most prominent teachers in the United States, and their accomplishments reveal that a considerable number of residents in the state appreciated fine art. Most great artists with natural talent create art for themselves first, for their own personal fulfillment; Kentucky painters loved their work so much that every winter they had to leave home and go south to work for an income. Audubon went to jail for debt and lived the life of a pauper while camping in the marshes and creating natural art as beautiful as any ever produced. Troye was born in Switzerland and Audubon in Haiti, but most of the others were Kentucky natives. Jouett and Frazer studied in Boston, and others trained in Philadelphia and New York. Bush has a painting in the White House; West painted Lord Byron; Troye was the best American sports painter in his day, creating beautiful portraits of thoroughbred horses. Architect Shryock's mentor was a student of Benjamin Latrobe, and Shryock brought Greek Revival architecture to Kentucky. Today, far and away the best known is Audubon, whose beautiful life-size images of birds in their natural habitat have never been surpassed.