biography of Samuel B. STOCKWELL (1813-1854)

Birth place: Boston

Death place: Savannah, GA

Profession: Painter, panoramist

Exhibited: St. Louis, New Orleans, and Charleston, 1848-

Comments: The son of an actor, Stockwell was first an actor, then scene painter at Boston's Tremont Theatre, during the 1830's. He also painted scenery at Charleston (1841), Mobile (1843), and New Orleans (1843, 1846). Sometime after 1842 he settled in St. Louis, where his daughter was born in 1845. Stockwell worked for a time with Henry Lewis on a panorama of the Mississippi, but the partnership was dissolved and both completed separate versions in 1848. After exhibiting his panorama with great success in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Charleston, Stockwell brought it to Boston, where he remained for several years. In 1852-53 he was back in St. Louis painting scenes for the theater. He died of yellow fever. P&H Samuels report that none of his paintings is known to survive.

Sources: G&W; Arrington, Samuel B. Stockwell and His Mississippi Panorama," unpub. manuscript; Arrington, "The Story of Stockwell's Panorama"; Delgado-WPA cites Picayune, Dec. 16, 1843, Dec. 3, 1848, and Courier, Jan. 2, 1849; Rutledge, Artists in the Life of Charleston; 7 Census (1850), Mass., XXV, 751. More recently, see additional contemporary news accounts cited in Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists, 366; Peggy and Harold Samuels, p.468."

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