John Sartain

John Sartain (24 October, 1808 in London, England - 25 October 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an artist who pioneered mezzotint engraving in the United States.

At the age of twenty-two he emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia. Early in his career he painted portraits in oil and made miniatures; he engraved plates in 1841-1848 for Graham's Magazine, published by George Rex Graham (1813-1894); became editor and proprietor of Campbell's Foreign Semi-Monthly Magazine in 1843; and from 1849-1852 published with Graham Sartain's Union Magazine.

Sartain was a colleague and friend of Edgar Allan Poe. One of the most bizarre incidents in either man's life occurred in June 1849, four months before Poe's death, when the author unexpectedly visited Sartain's house in Philadelphia claiming that he was being pursued by "loungers" and also that he was considering suicide. Poe asked to borrow Sartain's razor, claiming that he intended to shave off his moustache in an attempt to elude his mysterious pursuers. Since Poe was clearly suicidal at the time, Sartain claimed that he did not have a razor in the house. Sartain later recorded this incident in his memoirs.

Sartain had charge of the art department of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876; took a prominent part in the work of the committee on the Washington Memorial, by Rudolf Siemering, in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia; designed medallions for the monument to George Washington and Lafayette erected in 1869 in Monument Cemetery, Philadelphia; and was a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a cavaliere of the Royal Equestrian Order of the Crown of Italy.

His Reminiscences of a Very Old Man (New York, 1899) are of unusual interest. Of his children William Sartain (1843-1924), landscape and figure painter, was born at Philadelphia on the 21st of November 1843, studied under his father and under Leon Bonnat, Paris, was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists, and became an associate of the National Academy of Design. Another son, Samuel Sartain (1830-1906), and a daughter, Emily Sartain (1841-1927), who in 1886 became principal of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, were also American artists.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on John Sartain.