Shepard Alonzo Mount

One of three brothers to become painters, Shepard Alonzo Mount specialized in portraiture, while his older brother Henry Smith Mount was a sign and still life painter and his younger brother William Sidney Mount became a famous genre painter. Born in Seatawket on Long Island, Mount was apprenticed to a carriage maker in New Haven and New York. In New York with his brothers, Mount began drawing and painting and enrolled in the National Academy of Design. He painted portraits in New York City, in the Pennsylvania countryside, and on Long Island before becoming established as a portrait painter in the late 1830s. He exhibited regularly at the National Academy and was elected to membership.