Samuel King was an American portrait painter and maker of nautical instruments. He was also as a teacher of some famous artists.
Background
Samuel King was born on January 24, 1748 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States, the son of Benjamin and Mary (Haggar) King. The father, described as "a gentleman of very respectable character, " was born at Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of Daniel King, the emigrant, who settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, before 1644. The mother was of a Rhode Island family. The senior King made and repaired instruments for navigators in a shop bearing a quadrant as its sign at the corner of Thames and Pelham streets and here Samuel learned his principal means of livelihood.
Education
King was sent to Boston to study house-painting and other forms of applied art, according to a plausible tradition.
Career
King started his artistic career in Newport. He is said to have painted a portrait of a local gentleman which he exhibited in his father's shop window. It was so lifelike that the sitter's Negro factotum, mistaking it for reality, bowed low before it. It has also been said that King received the encouragement of Cosmo Alexander, the visiting Scottish painter, who also befriended Stuart.
Although he was an able portraitist, as shown by his likeness of Benjamin Mumford (Newport Historical Society) and other examples, King appears to have been unable to live from his art but continued to follow his father's business after the latter's death. Washington Allston speaks of Samuel King as one "who made quadrants and compasses, and occasionally painted portraits, " and depicts him as a friendly man to whom "sometimes I would take . .. a drawing, and was sure to get a kind word of encouragement. " King also instructed Edward Malbone, Gilbert Stuart, Anne Hall, who became a miniaturist, and Charles B. King, prolific painter of portraits at Washington, D. C. , and benefactor of the Redwood Library, Newport.
A fine portrait of Mrs. Richard Derby may have been painted by King at Salem while he visited his father's relatives. In August 1770 he made a miniature portrait of Reverend Ezra Stiles. In May 1783 King designed and displayed in front of the Rhode Island State House, Newport, a patriotic transparency which disclosed, among other execrated personages, Benedict Arnold suspended from a gallows.
Achievements
Connections
King married on August 26, 1770, Amey Vernon, daughter of Samuel Vernon, a prominent Newport merchant. She died on February 14, 1792, and in November 1795 he married Sarah Ward, also of Newport. His son Samuel King, Jr. , father of Charles William King, became an opulent East India merchant in New York, of the firm of King & Talbot, and another son, William Vernon King, a graduate of Brown University, successfully practiced law in Rhode Island.