Portrait of a Man, ca. 1815
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company 2002.1.102

One of the most extraordinary early American portraits, this likeness of a flame-haired man depicts someone full of religious fervor—probably the artist himself. Harlan Page was “born again” in 1814 during the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, and afterwards devoted himself to evangelism.

He claimed to have converted more than one hundred people “through my own direct and personal instrumentality.” Page’s biographer mentions that he drew when he was too ill to do much else, and that in 1825 he was drawing and engraving in Norwich, Connecticut. Only one other portrait and a tavern sign by his hand have survived.