c. 1825

Portrait of a Man from New York

American, 1788 - 1865

Ammi Phillips, an itinerant portrait painter who worked across the northeastern states for decades beginning about 1810, served a well-dressed, middle-class clientele. His sitters, like Mr. Warburton, are often shown with books and seated in fancy painted chairs. Painting with a "folk" aesthetic, Phillips created images with strong value contrasts, crisp contours, flattened forms, and lively surface patterns.