Henry Colton Shumway

A soldier and talented artist, Henry Colton Shumway began studying at the Academy of Design in New York City at the age of twenty-one. By 1831, he had established himself as a reputable painter, exhibiting his work and taking commissions from prominent figures such as Governor John Trumbull, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay. During Shumway’s early years as an artist, his paintings sold for ten dollars, a small fee compared to the three hundred dollars he charged during the height of his career. With the increasing popularity of photography in the 1860s, Shumway, like many artists of the time, abandoned miniature painting to produce hand-colored daguerreotypes.