Charles Bird King

Following the lead of his fellow artists working in early America, King specialized in portraiture. He studied under Edward Savage in New York, then with Benjamin West in London. He returned to America in 1812 and worked in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. In 1818 he settled permanently in the nation's capital. There he painted portraits of many prominent figures, including John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun, Henry Clay, James Monroe, and Daniel Webster. Commissioned by the federal government, King painted more than one hundred portraits of Indian delegates, representing at least twenty tribes, who visited the capital from 1821 to 1842. His work stands today as a valuable record of early Indian leaders.William Truettner, edThe West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920(Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)