Charles Bird King. Charles Bird King was an American portrait artist, best known for his portrayals of significant Native American leaders and tribesmen.
Charles Bird King was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only child of Deborah and Zebulon King, an American Revolutionary veteran and captain. The family traveled west after the war, but when King was four years old, his father was killed and scalped by Native Americans near Marietta, Ohio.
Because of this, Deborah King took her young son and moved back to her parents' home in Newport. When King was fifteen, he went to New York to study under the portrait painter Edward Savage.
At age twenty he moved to London to study under Benjamin West at the Royal Academy. After a seven-year stay in London, King returned to the U.S.
due to the War of 1812. He lived and worked in the major cities of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and Richmond, Virginia. He eventually settled in Washington, DC, due to the economic appeal of the burgeoning capital city. Here King developed a solid reputation as a portraitist among politicians, and earned enough to maintain his own studio and gallery. King's economic success in the art world, particularly in the field of portraiture, was in part dependent on his ability to socialize with the wealthy celebrities, and relate to the well-educated politicians of the time: His industry and simple habits enabled him
Charles Bird King was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only child of Deborah and Zebulon King, an American Revolutionary veteran and captain. The family traveled west after the war, but when King was four years old, his father was killed and scalped by Native Americans near Marietta, Ohio.
Because of this, Deborah King took her young son and moved back to her parents' home in Newport. When King was fifteen, he went to New York to study under the portrait painter Edward Savage.
At age twenty he moved to London to study under Benjamin West at the Royal Academy. After a seven-year stay in London, King returned to the U.S.
due to the War of 1812. He lived and worked in the major cities of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and Richmond, Virginia. He eventually settled in Washington, DC, due to the economic appeal of the burgeoning capital city. Here King developed a solid reputation as a portraitist among politicians, and earned enough to maintain his own studio and gallery. King's economic success in the art world, particularly in the field of portraiture, was in part dependent on his ability to socialize with the wealthy celebrities, and relate to the well-educated politicians of the time: His industry and simple habits enabled him
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