After locating Stanley, Bowman reportedly urged him to the field of portraiture with the flattering observation that ‘the painter of the head of Franklin should quit house and sign painting and devote himself to studying the higher art of portrait painting.’” He enquired of the sign’s creator and found out that it was one John Mix Stanley. The Detroit Free Press later wrote of their first meeting, “While walking by the offices of the Free Press, Bowman admired a portrait of Benjamin Franklin on a sign over the newspaper’s door. Bowman was a widely traveled artist, having moved around Canada and the Eastern United States in the 1830s and 1840s painting the gentry in cities such as Boston, Montreal, Toronto, and Detroit (figures 1, 2).įigure 2. While there, Stanley gained the attention of artist, James Bowman (1793–1842), an itinerant portrait painter out of Pennsylvania who had trained in Europe under Sir Thomas Lawrence. Upon his father’s death in 1834, Stanley moved to Detroit, thus beginning his journey as an itinerant artist.
#Sign and portrait painter proctor 1800s full
In an effort to pursue his goal of painting full time, he left for Buffalo to begin work as a sign painter. During his four-year apprenticeship, he was said to have bought canvases to practice painting in his spare time, scraping off and reusing the material with each new composition to save money.
In 1828, he was placed into an apprenticeship in Naples, New York under a wagon maker. John Mix Stanley began painting and drawing at an early age in Buffalo, New York.
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