John Neagle

John Neagle was a Philadelphia portrait painter with a sharp eye for character and a quick, confident brush. His sitters look straight out at you, lit with warmth and painted with loose, lively handling of cloth and hair.

Born in Boston and raised in Philadelphia, he trained under Pietro Ancora and Thomas Wilson and became a protégé of Thomas Sully, whose stepdaughter he married. His best-known picture, Pat Lyon at the Forge, shows a blacksmith at work rather than a gentleman at leisure, and it hangs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also painted Henry Clay, and he helped found and then led the Artists’ Fund Society of Philadelphia.

His portraits of Philadelphia families, such as Amy Taylor Dickson, show the clear, direct likenesses that kept him busy for decades.