Samuel Lovett Waldo and William Jewett, who painted portraits as partners, enjoyed extensive patronage in New York. Samuel L. Waldo went to Hartford, Connecticut, at the age of sixteen to study painting with Joseph Steward (1753 -1822). At the age of twenty he began to work as a portraitist in Hartford, then Litchfield, Connecticut, and later Charleston, South Carolina. In 1806 he went to London with letters of introduction to BENJAMIN WEST and JOHN S. COPLEY and was befriended by both, becoming one of the last American students of West. He roomed with another of them, Charles Bird King (1785-1862). Waldo studied drawing at the Royal Academy and was able to exhibit a portrait there in 1808. He married before returning to America in January 1809 and taking up permanent residence in New York. Waldo soon assumed a position as a leading portraitist. He was a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Fine Arts from 1817 to 1828.

In 1812 Waldo took as an apprentice William Jewett, who had purchased his release from an apprenticeship to a coachmaker in New London, Connecticut, in order to go to New York to study with Waldo, who took him into his home, where he remained for eighteen years. While assisting Waldo in routine studio business, he drew from casts, learned from Waldo, and painted landscapes with him along the Hudson. From 1816 to 1819 Jewett exhibited at the American Academy of Fine Arts, mostly still lifes, but also a genre painting, a history painting, and two portraits. In 1818 Waldo took him into partnership, and until 1854 they worked together as the firm of Waldo and Jewett, even becoming associate members of the National Academy of Design under that Joint name in 1847. In 1842 Jewett moved to Bergen Hill, New Jersey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Artist Biography: Samuel L. Waldo," Crayon 8 (May 1861): 98 - 100 § Dictionary of American Biography, 10: 333 -34, Waldo entry by William H. Downes, with bibliography; 5: 72-73, Jewett entry by Agnes B. Brett, with bibliography § Helen C. Nelson, "The Jewetts: William and William S.," International Studio 83 (January 1926): 39 - 42 § Frederic Fairchild Sherman, "Samuel L. Waldo and William Jewett, Portrait Painters," in Early American Portraiture (New York: Privately printed, 1930), pp. 15-19, with lists of portraits by the individual artists § New-York Historical Society, Catalogue of American Portraits in the New-York Historical Society (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1941), passim.