Three out of Four : Painting

Since American during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds was still a developing nation they had many political leaders coming up looking for a shot at shared power. And with this comes the need for portrait painters so represent these important people in paintings. Looking at paintings done throughout colonial times is a great representation of the feelings of the colonists and also gives us a look at what our leaders looked like. As painters became more and more comfortable with the land and became feeling more like Americans rather than simply immigrants in a strange land. Also as monumental events changed history paintings became on of the favored ways of representing these things. Painting was in that time a way for people to express themselves and although many more talented painters were paid to paint important people the vast majority of people who were painting were doing it simply out of enjoyment and trying to represent their surroundings visually. Those who were good enough to be hired to paint generally painted not from what they say but from what the person hiring them wanted them to see. It is clear that paintings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and various other people of high stature had their paintings made to make them look like attractive, successful, and important men, while painters who did it for shear enjoyment took the real aspect of life and thats a true representation of American life. A few paintings were recovered from a house maintained from the 1850’s. These pictures were not necessarily professionally done but there mere beauty of the simplicity of them has had people put them on display in over three major museums. This shows that even though he was only painting for his own enjoyment he captured the true essence of American land and nature. In conclusion, painting was yet another way that colonists expressed themselves and it provided the bored colonists with something to do after long ours of working on the farm or doing various other odd jobs.