GROWING | PORTRAITIST | LANDSCAPIST | GALLERY |
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Head-Hunting |
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_ | On March 8, 1848, Junius wrote: "Spencer, on Friday the 10th I shall
be a man, i.e. I shall be 21. God grant that I may so conduct myself that my friends need
never blush to acknowledge me as such." Junius wrote from Ashtabula at the home of
Mr. and Mrs. Strong whose portraits and those of two children he was painting. The
portraits took two weeks to complete and earned him $20. Junius, a novice itinerant portraitist now in his majority, left home for almost two years, "hunting heads" to paint. Junius called it "my first rambling for any considerable distance from the paternal roof." In his Autobiographical Fragments Junius tells of his encounters and travels by foot, stage, steamboat and canal boat until, near Middlebury Vermont, he saw the mountains for the first time. "As we drew near the mountains, the clouds lifted as a curtain and a broad panoramic view of these wondrous creations [was] revealed to me... Fatigue, and hunger and cold and wet were measurably forgotten..." In Middlebury, Junius painted the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Severance. These are now in the Sheldon Museum, Middlebury, and are the earliest located paintings by Sloan. |
