James C. Kelly

Tennessee, which until recently was rural, egalitarian, and lacking in concentrated wealth, never has been a center of art patronage or production. The first generation of pioneers lacked both time and money for art, and there is hardly any documentation…

Brothers Ebenezer and Peter Ross Calvert were successful photographers and painters in Nashville at the turn of the century. Both were born in Yorkshire, England, near Leeds, and studied art there before arriving in Nashville in the 1870s. The Calvert…

James Cameron, portrait and landscape painter, was born in Grennock, Scotland. He came to Philadelphia with his family about 1833. When he was twenty-two, he moved to Indianapolis to become a portraitist, but he was back in Philadelphia by 1847.…

John Wood Dodge, portraitist and photographer, was born in New York City, the son of a goldsmith and watchmaker and his Canadian-born wife. Dodge was apprenticed to a sign painter, under whom he began to copy, then paint, original miniatures.…

Ralph E. W. Earl, portraitist, was the son of Connecticut painter Ralph Earl (1751-1801) and his second wife, Anne Whiteside of Norwich, England. Born in England, Earl studied under his father in Northhampton, Massachusetts, before traveling to London in 1809…

Painter and portraitist Avery Handly was born in Nashville and graduated from Wallace University School and Vanderbilt University, where he majored in English and was influenced by the Fugitives. His first art instruction, at age twelve, was from Miss Emma…

Born near Guntown, Itawamba County, Mississippi, Cornelius H. Hankins was the sixth of eight children of Reverend Edward Locke Hankins and Annie Mary McFadden Hankins. He contracted smallpox after his mother cared for Confederate soldiers. As a result, he was…

Prominent nineteenth-century portraitist and figurative painter Robert L. Newman was born in Richmond, Virginia, the second child and only son of Robert L. Newman and Sarah J. Matthews. Newman's father died when he was young, and the family moved to…

Willie Betty Newman, a key figure in the state's art community at the turn of the century, was born on the Benjamin Rucker plantation near Murfreesboro, the daughter of Colonel William Francis Betty and Sophie Rucker Betty. She attended Soule…

Portraitist Samuel M. Shaver was born in Sullivan County, the son of David Shaver and Catherine (Barringer) Shaver. He may have been influenced by William Harrison Scarborough (1812-1871), a native-born Tennessee artist, four years Shaver's senior, who did portraits of…