Portrait of a Man

Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman were painted to hang as a pair, the two sitters facing one another as husband and wife. The profile was a common portrait style in America’s first decades, and these paintings show the softer line and naturalistic modeling that Jacob Eichholtz favored in his later profile portraits. Eichholtz was a savvy businessman. He ran a smithing business and charged the same amount for framed portraits as he did for copper teakettles or lanterns, making the portraits as affordable as other essential household items. From 1801 until 1811, he produced many profiles and sold them for such a fair price that he became the leading portraitist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Ryan, The Worlds of Jacob Eichholtz: Portrait Painter of the Early Republic, 2003).