Henry Inman was born in Utica, New York. He moved with his family to New York City in 1812. Two years later (having received lessons from a drawing teacher), he embarked on a seven-year apprenticeship with the portrait painter John Wesley Jarvis, ultimately transitioning from his role as a student to that of collaborator by painting in the backgrounds and draperies of Jarvis’s portraits. In 1821, Inman began his career as a portrait and miniature painter in Albany, New York. Two years later, he returned to New York and established his own studio. In 1824, he formed a thriving partnership with Thomas Seir Cummings, wherein Inman executed portraits in oil and Cummings painted miniatures. In 1826, Inman and Cummings helped found the National Academy of Design, with Inman serving as its first vice-president from 1826 to 1831.
From 1831 until 1834, Inman worked in and around Philadelphia, painting portraits and operating, in partnership with Cephas G. Childs, the lithographic firm of Childs and Inman. Returning to New York in 1834, he resumed his role as the city’s preeminent portraitist, creating such well-known likenesses as his portrait of Martin Van Buren (1835; The New-York Historical Society). As well as enjoying favorable critical recognition, Inman’s success was also measured by his strong earnings. His income peaked in 1837, when he earned $10,095, and in the following year, as reported by Henry T. Tuckerman, he “enjoyed an income from his pencil of nearly nine thousand dollars” (see William H. Gerdts and Carrie Rebora, The Art of Henry Inman, exhib. cat. [Washington, D.C.: The National Portrait Gallery, 1987], p. 45; and Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists [New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867], p. 236).
With the exception of a visit to England from 1844 to 1845––during which time he did portraits of such notables as the poet William Wordsworth and Lord Macauley and painted the occasional landscape––Inman remained in New York for the rest of his life. Declining health and bad investments made during the late 1830s no doubt contributed to his premature death from an enlarged heart and complications from asthma on January 17, 1846. In the wake of his passing, Inman’s fellow Academicians at the National Academy of Design mounted a memorial exhibition of his work, directing the proceeds of the show to his widow and five children.
