The Life Portraits of Henry Clay: A Re-Examination

This work of research is an attempt to harness the extensive collection of images of one of antebellum America’s eminent statesman. Henry Clay assisted in the legislative passage of the Missouri and California compromises, extending the territorial borders of the emergent western territories in the 1830s to the 1850s. He ran twice with the party nomination for president in 1824 in the National Republican Party and in 1844 in the Whig Party. It is the author’s hope that the preeminent names in antebellum American art G. P. A. Healy, Charles Bird King, and George Caleb Bingham, among those to render Henry Clay, will assist students of art and history.