Ralph earl was born into a connecticutfarm family in 1751. He closeearly to become a painter and looked for what training was available in his home state and in Boston. Earl was one of the first American artists to paint landscapa. Among his first painting were scanes from the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. In 1778 Earl went to London to study with Benjamin West for four years.
When aerl returned to the United States, he was jailed for fourteen months for outstanding debts. While still a prisoner, he painted portraits of some of New York City’s most elegant society women and their husband. After his release, he took up the trade of itinerant portrait painter, working his way through southern New England and New York. Earl didn’t flatter his subjects, but his portraits show a deep understanding of them, perhaps because he had sprung from the same roots.
Among Earl’s most famous painting is his portrait of Justice Oliver Ellsworth and his wife, Abigail To provide counterpoint to the severity of the couple, he accurately details the relative lixury of tha Ellsworth’s interior furnishings. Tha view through the windowbehind them shows sunlit fields, well-kept fences, and a bend of the Connecticut River. One of earl’s painting is somethink of an anomaly. Reclining hunter, which for many years was attributed to Thomas Gainsborough, shows a well dressed gentleman resting beneath a tree. In the foreground, he displays a pile of birds, the result of a day’s hunt. Tha viewer can also a farmer’s donkey lying in the background, another of the hunter’s victims. This outrageously funny portrait couldn’t have been commissioned – no one would have wanted to be portrayed in such an absurd way. However, this painting uncharacteristically shows Earl’s wih as his uncommon technical skills.
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