James Edwards Freeman was the son of Joshua Edwards and Eliza (Morgan) Freeman, and a descendant of Samuel Freeman who emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, with Gov. Winthrop in 1630.
Freeman’s family had removed to Indian Island, New Brunswick, shortly before his birth, but returned to the United States within a few years to settle in Otsego County, New York.
The desire for artistic training led Freeman through many hardships to New York City, where in 1826, he applied to William Dunlap for instruction.
On Dunlap’s recommendation, he was entered as a student in the National Academy of Design, where his application and precocity gained for him the affection and encouragement of the older artists. In 1833, he was elected to membership in the Academy.
After a short residence in the ancestral home of James Fenimore Cooper, Freeman left America in 1836 for Italy, where he remained, a voluntary expatriate, to the end of his life. In 1840, he was appointed consul to Ancona, a position which he held until July 1849.
Most of the time, he lived in Rome discharging his slight duties through an agent. Upon his own evidence, it was an unimportant commission which he remembered chiefly for the expense it caused him. As an artist, Freeman subscribed to the current taste for rich colors and human misery. He rarely exhibited his pictures in America.
His self-portrait was exhibited in the Centennial Exhibition of 1925 and later placed in the National Academy rooms on 33rd St.
He published two volumes of memoirs, Gatherings from an Artist’s Portfolio (1877), and Gatherings from an Artist's Portfolio in Rome (1883). They reveal an instinct for storytelling and a genial disposition but have no pretensions beyond presenting a slightly decorated picture of Bohemian life. In the advance of taste, Freeman’s pictures lost their following.
At the time of his death, Freeman was almost forgotten as an artist and was remembered rather as a picturesque member of the old guard in the Roman art colony, and a charming example of a past age. Among his better-known pictures are “The Beggars, ” “The Flower Girl, ” “The Savoyard Boy in Italy, ” “Young Italy, ” and “The Bad Shoe, ” all of which were insipidly sentimental. The last one to be shown before his death was “Mother and Child” which was hung in the National Academy Exhibit of 1868.
Freeman had married Augusta Latilla, a sculptress, in 1845.
