Modern Age
George Peter Alexander Healy (1813–1894)
American Neoclassicism painter.
George Peter Alexander Healy (15 July 1813, Boston – 24 June 1894, Chicago) was the most sought-after American portrait painter of the mid-nineteenth century. Fatherless young, he copied a Guido Reni Ecce Homo lent by Jane Stuart and was pointed toward Thomas Sully; in 1834 he left for Europe, studied with Antoine-Jean Gros in Paris, absorbed Thomas Couture, and won a third-class Salon medal in 1840 and a second-class medal in 1855 for Franklin urging the claims of the American colonies. Louis-Philippe sent him back across the Atlantic to paint Andrew Jackson from life at The Hermitage in May 1845, weeks before Jackson died — Healy's first presidential likeness taken from the sitter.
He painted sitting presidents and statesmen from John Quincy Adams through Grant, kept studios in Paris and Chicago (1855–69 and again at the end of his life), and spent 1869–92 chiefly in Rome and Paris. Webster's Reply to Hayne (1851, Faneuil Hall) packs a hundred and thirty portraits into one hall; The Peacemakers (1868) and the 1869 Lincoln are the Civil War images by which he is still known. His autobiography, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, appeared in 1894.
This file tags him to The Hermitage because the 1845 Jackson painted there is the Nashville reason to generate in his manner. The National Portrait Gallery's 1861 Jackson is a later copy after that life study and is labelled as such. Lincoln and Webster sit in other public collections and are included as Commons-verified works, not as Hermitage holdings.
The words the record keeps using: facile, forceful, official, intimate, industrious, cosmopolitan.
At a glance
- Lived 1813–1894
- Origin American
- Worked in Rome, Paris
- Era Modern Age
- Movements Neoclassicism
- Mediums Oil on canvas
- Techniques Oil glazing, Chiaroscuro
Works in the archive
- Andrew Jackson, 1845 (The Hermitage, Nashville, Tennessee (Commons credit: Andrew Jackson's Hermitage). Painted from life in May 1845.)
Jackson in a dark cloak, painted at The Hermitage in May 1845 on a commission from Louis-Philippe, a month before Jackson's death on 8 June. Marquis James recorded that dropsical swelling had reached the face, so only… - Daniel Webster, 1846 (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.65.51. Not a Hermitage picture.)
Webster in dark coat and white stock, dated 1846 on the Commons/NPG file — the year after the Hermitage Jackson, when Healy was building the statesman series that later fed Webster's Reply to Hayne. A public Washington… - Andrew Jackson (1861 copy after the 1845 life study), 1861 (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2019.20. A later copy after the 1845 Hermitage life portrait, not a second sitting.)
The National Portrait Gallery's 1861 Jackson, painted by Healy sixteen years after the Hermitage sitting. Wikipedia's portrait list and the NPG object page treat it as a copy of the 1845 original. It is included so the… - Abraham Lincoln, 1869 (Public collection photographed for the Google Art Project (Healy's 1869 Lincoln type). Not a Hermitage picture.)
The 1869 Lincoln, one of Healy's defining late portraits and a sibling of the type later used for a 1959 U.S. postage stamp. Included as a Commons-verified work so the Hermitage Jackson is not his only generate-ready… - Self-Portrait, 1873 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913.134. Not a Hermitage picture.)
Healy at sixty, painted in 1873 during the long European sojourn, now at the Art Institute of Chicago. A working likeness of the painter who had taken Jackson at The Hermitage twenty-eight years earlier.
What was said
All my days are spent in my painting room
At the May 1845 Hermitage sitting a dropsical swelling had spread to Jackson's face, so only the eyes — the right one blind — the forehead, and the hair were painted from life; three versions of the portrait exist.
Hunt described Healy as remarkably facile and industrious, his style essentially French, his drawing correct, his colour fine, and his likenesses emphatic, rugged, and forceful, built with firm outline, solid paint, and later glazings.
What would George make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after George Peter Alexander Healy", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with George · Keep a life moment the way George would · Pictures made after George