Portraiture

Francis Cezeron

Oil on canvas of Archibald Loudon, painted in 1807 by Cezeron.

Francis Cezeron an itinerant portrait artist was born in Virginia in 1747 and died in Kentucky in 1828. He passed through Western Pennsylvania painting portraits in the first decade of the nineteenth century. He appeared in Lancaster in 1806 as a teacher of dance and French. There he also painted profiles and knew painter, Jacob Eicholtz. In 1806 Cezeron placed ads in the Carlisle Herald stating that he was reopening his Schools for Dance and French. Ads appeared again in 1807 for the school.

Thomas S. Officer: Miniature and Portrait Painter

Born in Carlisle in 1810, this gifted artist trained in Philadelphia, traveled extensively, won awards for his paintings, and drank himself to an early death in San Francisco in 1859. In 1872, James Miller McKim wrote a series of reminiscences for the Carlisle Herald newspaper about the places and people of Carlisle in an earlier day. He wrote that “David Smith, a boot and shoemaker, had two sons…