A Life in Portraiture and Teaching
James Alexander Simpson was an American painter born in Georgetown, United States. He embarked on an artistic career early in life, and by 1831, he was known to have copied a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette by Ary Scheffer. His professional life was deeply intertwined with Georgetown University, where he taught drawing and painting from 1830 until 1865. His artistic style has been described as "primitive," yet it remained sophisticated and lacked bombast.
Simpson was primarily a portraitist, capturing the likenesses of notable figures such as:
His work demonstrated a distinct artistic growth between his earlier and later pieces, with his later paintings showing an awareness of the Americana focus emerging in the broader artistic community.
Legacy and Notable Works
Simpson's legacy is preserved through various collections and significant portraits. He is well-remembered for his five landscape depictions of the Georgetown campus produced in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Other notable works include his 1822 portrait of Yarrow Mamout, which has been displayed in the Peabody Room of the Georgetown branch of the District of Columbia Public Library and placed on long-term loan to the National Portrait Gallery.
His surviving and documented works include:
After moving to Baltimore in 1865, he lived there until his death in 1880.
