Jefferson David Chalfant

Chalfant's career can be roughly divided into three periods: still life painting in the 1880s, genre painting in the 1890s, and portraiture in the early 1900s. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Chalfant worked as a cabinet-maker in Pennsylvania and Delaware, before settling in Wilmington, where he took a studio and began producing trompe l'oeil still life paintings influenced by the work of William Harnett. A patron, Alfred Corning Clark, sent Chalfant to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian. After his return Chalfant began making genre paintings, often of craftsmen in their workshops. In the early 1900s, with the patronage of Senator Saulsbury, the artist delved into portraiture.