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MATTHEW HARRIS JOUETT
(American, 1788-1827)

Portrait of Asa Blanchard, about 1817-20
Oil on canvas
Gift of Rowland D. and Eleanor B. Miller, Mr. and Mrs. Owsley Brown II, Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, and John S. Speed 2000.4.1

Asa Blanchard, the subject of this portrait, is Kentucky’s best-known silversmith. Although his origins remain uncertain, he is first recorded working as a silversmith in 1808 in Lexington, where his career flourished for thirty years. A master craftsman, Blanchard produced a wide range of high-quality silver pieces for prominent Kentucky families. One of Blanchard’s most famous commissions was a pair of silver candlesticks made for Isaac Shelby, Kentucky’s first governor, now in the collection of the Speed Art Museum.

Likewise, Matthew Harris Jouett was Kentucky’s earliest resident portraitist and its leading portrait painter of the early nineteenth century. After studying and briefly practicing law, Jouett, perhaps influenced by the English-born landscape artist George Beck (1738/40-1812) of Lexington, decided to become a painter. He opened his Lexington studio in 1815. This portrait of Blanchard shows the commanding quality and powerful directness of Jouett’s portraits following his return from studying briefly with painter Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) in Boston in 1816. It presents a forthright, convincing likeness of the sitter. The somewhat stern and tight-lipped expression suggests the shrewdness and practicality of the silversmith’s character.