Ann Hall

Ann (or Anne) Hall (1792–1863) was an American painter and miniaturist. Ann Hall has been described as the most successful miniature painter active in early nineteenth-century New York, renowned for her engaging portraits, especially of children and young brides. Although many of her compositions strike modern audiences as sentimental, her popularity during her lifetime and the significance of her career are attested by the high prices paid for her miniatures (often five hundred dollars per commission) and her election to the National Academy of Design, New York. She has been credited for inspiring a renaissance in the technique of painting miniatures on ivory in the United States. Early life Hall was born in Pomfret, Connecticut on May 31, 1792, the sixth of eleven surviving children of Jonathan (or John) Hall, a prominent physician, and his wife, the former Bathesheba Mumford. Her considerable artistic talent was encouraged by her family and at a young age she was experimenting with several different techniques, including cutting silhouettes, modeling figures in wax, and executing flower pictures and still lifes in watercolor and pencil. Education and early career Hall visited the home of her mother's family in Newport, Rhode Island with an elder sister. There she learned to sketch and paint in oil and make miniatures in watercolors on ivory from the Samuel King, one of the teachers of Gilbert Stuart.