ALVAN

FISHER (1792–1863)  , American portrait-painter, was born at Needham, Massachusetts, on the 9th of August 1792 . At the age of eighteen he was a clerk in a country shop, and subsequently was employed by the village house painter, but at the age of twenty-two he began to paint portrait heads, alternating with rural scenes and animals, for which he found patrons at modest prices . In ten years he had saved enough to go to Europe, studying at the Paris schools and copying in the galleries of the Louvre . Upon his return he became one of the recognized group of Massachusetts portrait-painters . Along with Doughty, Harding and Alexander, in 1831, he held an exhibition of his work in Boston—perhaps the first joint display by painters ever held in that city . Though he had considerable talent for landscape, a lack of patronage for such work caused him to confine himself to portraiture, in which he was moderately successful . He died at Dedham, Mass., on the 16th of February 1863 .