John Neagle

• 1850 census: John Neagle (50, b Mass); in Philadelphia, Penn. w ch. (all born Philadelphia), Elizabeth (19), Garrett (18), Sallly (17), Susan (15), Mary (12), Jane (10), Margaret (9), and Ellen (6). He is a portrait artist, son Garrett is a clerk.

John Neagle

• Born:4 November 1796, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Died:September 17, 1865 (aged 68), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Nationality:American
• Works:

1. Pat Lyon at the Forge

#Portraits of Joseph Philmpre, Henry Clay 

John Neagle (4 November 1796 – 17 September 1865) was a fashionable American painter, primarily of portraits, during the first half of the 19th century in Philadelphia.

'Pat Lyon at the Forge' (1829), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Neagle was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His training in art began with instruction from the drawing-master Pietro Ancora and an apprenticeship to Thomas Wilson, a well-connected painter of signs and coaches in Philadelphia. Wilson introduced him to the painters Bass Otis and Thomas Sully, and Neagle became a protégé of the latter. In 1818 Neagle decided to concentrate exclusively on portraits, setting up shop as an independent master.[1]

Aside from brief sojourns in Lexington, Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, he spent his career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he died. In May 1826 he married Sully's stepdaughter Mary, and for a time the son-in-law and father-in-law dominated the field of portraiture in the city. Neagle served as Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and was also a founder and president (1835–43) of the Artist's Fund Society of Philadelphia.[2]

Works[edit]

Neagle's sitters included society figures, politicians, professionals and merchants, all of whom he treated with an incisive attention to psychology and an often dazzling brushwork derived (by way of Sully and Sir Thomas Lawrence) ultimately from van Dyck. His most impressive works are, arguably, the full-length allegorical portrait of Henry Clay (Union League, Philadelphia), and the unconventional and brutally heroic "Pat Lyon at the Forge" (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts).

Lyon was a young Philadelphia blacksmith who manufactured the locks for a bank vault housed in Carpenters' Hall. During a 1798 yellow fever epidemic that emptied the city, the bank deposits were stolen. Lyon, who had lost his wife and child in the epidemic, was accused of the robbery, and held, without evidence, in Walnut Street Prison. Even after the real culprits were arrested, Lyon continued to be imprisoned. He sued, won his release, and received punitive damages from the city. Neagle's portrait/genre painting shows a middle-aged Lyon at work at his forge, with the cupola of Walnut Street Prison visible in the background.

Other Neagle sitters included Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, Governor John Jordan Crittenden of Kentucky, Congressman James Harper and his wife Charlotte, the Marquis de Lafayette, Bishop William Meade, Dr. William Potts Dewees, author James Fenimore Cooper, fellow painter Gilbert Stuart, actor Edwin Forrest and the architects William Strickland, John Haviland and Thomas Ustick Walter. His papers are housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which hosted a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1989 (with scholarly catalogue by Robert Torchia).

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Neagle

JOHN NEAGLE .. Birth: Nov. 4, 1796 Boston Suffolk County Massachusetts, USA Death: Sep. 17, 1865 Philadelphia County Pennsylvania, USA

Artist. He was one of early America's foremost portraitists. In his early years as an artist he was encouraged by the likes of Bass Otis, Charles Wilson Peale, and Thomas Sully. His talents were also appreciated by Thomas Wilson who ran a business painting carraiges and painting ornamental work. Neagle's work is hung at the Second Bank of the United States/Portrait Gallery in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. Among his portrait subjects were Gilbert Stuart and Justice George Sharswood. He was the husband of Thomas Sully's niece, Mary C. Sully. (Note: Mary C. Sully was also Thomas Sully's step-daughter)

Burial: Saint Mary's Catholic Churchyard Philadelphia Philadelphia County Pennsylvania, USA

Edit Virtual Cemetery info [?]

Created by: rjschatz Record added: Mar 29, 2005 Find A Grave Memorial# 10700768

• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Neagle&GSfn=J...
• Under MEDIA: Portrait of Thomas Birch; Pat Lyon at the Forge.