Corwine, Aaron Houghton (1802-1830)

Aaron Houghton Corwine was born in Maysville, Kentucky, to Amos Corwine, an early settler of Mason County. Before becoming an artist Aaron was "a ploughboy, for which he never showed much taste," according to the antiquarian historian Lewis Collins. Collins' mythic history of Corwine includes an episode of painting his father's barns and fences with "grotesque figures" which were so "fanciful and striking" that Amos determined to give "him the opportunity to pursue the inclination of his mind." After a brief period of study with a local portraitist, an unidentified Mr. Turner, Aaron set off for Cincinnati in 1818. Bearing a letter of introduction to Dr. Daniel Drake, an eminent surgeon, his talents soon attracted sufficient sponsors for further study in Philadelphia with the renowned Thomas Sully. Sully found him to be "gentle, full of kind sympathy and delicate taste." Having acquired all the knowledge he needed to establish himself as an artist he returned to Cincinnati in 1820, becoming that city's first resident portraitist. After Frederick Eckstein organized a successful exhibition of his work in 1829, Corwine departed for further study in England. Already suffering from tuberculosis, he was forced to return to America and died not long after landing in Philadelphia in 1830. Edward Dwight, the only author of note on the artist to date, praises his ability to "get a perfect likeness and to capture an expression of vitality." How sadly romantic that "galloping consumption" should deprive the present of larger numbers of work from this artist of the past whose "work, like his character," was "candid and guileless, modest and unobtrusive." Left: Dorothy Waltz Kerner (c.1805-c.1870) Oil on canvas 26 ½ x 21 ½ inches c. 1828 Right: Lewis Kerner (1800-1868) Oil on canvas 25 ½ x 20 ¼ inches c. 1828 These portraits, gifts of Betty Bone Schiess, a collateral descendent of the subjects, may have been painted at the time of their marriage in July, 1828. Lewis Kerner was a noted jeweler and clockmaker based in Zanesville, Ohio.