The art of the early Federal period did not greatly differ from that of the late colonial era. Portraits dominated the small field of painting. Victories on land and at sea in the War of 1812 brought the fledgling democracy greater confidence and new national pride. By 1829, when Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency, the foundations for an independent culture were securely laid. The philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the mood of the country in 1837: “our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close.” The following decades would bring a swell of artistic creativity, focused on native themes that extolled the seemingly limitless bounty of the New World.
Portraiture, and to a lesser extent history painting, continued to occupy American artists, but increasing numbers turned to views of the local countryside and its inhabitants. Although the industrial revolution only began in the United States after the War of 1812, the following three decades witnessed economic changes, especially in the north, that significantly affected working conditions, family structure, and even religion. Paintings illustrated American virtues like ingenuity and industry as well as the pleasures of country life. The new taste for genre pictures—scenes of ordinary people involved in everyday activities—seemed ideally suited to the egalitarian attitude of the Jacksonian era.
This period also saw the rise of the country’s first truly national school of landscape painting, ultimately known as the Hudson River school. Its earliest, best-known exponent, Thomas Cole, sometimes painted romantic literary subjects in European settings, but his dramatic depictions of the American wilderness helped spur the popularity of American views. As the country developed, paintings of uninhabited wilderness were replaced by views of farms, towns, and factories, but American artists retained their sense of awe about the land.

Exhibition Label, 1997 Randall Palmer was an itinerant portrait painter active during the 1820s and 1830s around Syracuse in western New York. Paintings such as The Young Artist, with its scale and complexity, indicate that he was far more accomplished than typical early provincial artists. Palmer excelled at meticulous details, here seen in the caned seat and veneer of the Empire chair and the patterned floor decoration. His instruction of several students may have inspired this painting. A young artist is shown seated before an easel, surrounded by the tools of the profession. A portfolio of prints on the floor behind his chair and a partly open book of landscapes show the sources used by the beginner, while the busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin – similar to works by the Philadelphia sculptor Benamin Rush – indicate another important field of artistic endeavor. This colorful folk image conveys the simplicity of most Americans, who still had a relatively unsophisticated lifestyle in rural areas.

• About the Era.

• A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America. Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 2014.

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art Members' Calendar 1993,  vol. 31, no. 1-11 (January-November, 1993).
• LACMA: Obras Maestras 1750-1950: Pintura Estadounidense Del Museo De Arte Del Condado De Los Angeles. Mexico, D.F.: Museo Nacional de Arte, 2006.