Jesse Talbot
Born in Dighton, Massachusetts, Talbot worked for the American Tract Society and other evangelical Christian organizations in New York City before becoming a professional artist, first exhibiting in the National Academy of Design in 1838.
[7] Through that organization, he came into contact with the Reverend Richard Sluyter of Claverack, New York, whose daughter Mary Augusta he married in the Dutch Reformed church in that town in 1836.
[11] Other notable early works include the paintings Rockland Lake (1840; unlocated), which was reproduced in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir of 1842,[12] and The Happy Valley (1841), based on Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (private collection).
His 1847 painting Christian at the Cross (private collection), based on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, was exhibited at both venues in that year and received critical acclaim from the New York press.
[18] Two years later, in 1849, he produced another canvas based on The Pilgrim’s Progress, entitled Departure of Christian from the Palace, Called Beautiful, which he exhibited at the National Academy.
Although he completed both of these paintings when other National Academy artists were conceptualizing a major moving panorama based on The Pilgrim’s Progress, Talbot was not credited as a contributor to that project.
[25] Talbot continued to produce major paintings in the early 1850s, including Tropical Scenery—Early Morning, now at the Saco Museum; two paintings depicting the mythical “Phantom Ship” of New Haven, Connecticut, now at the New Haven Museum; and, all currently unlocated, On the Juniata (engraved to accompany a text by Bayard Taylor for The Home Book of the Picturesque); Discovery of the Hudson; and Indian’s Last Gaze.
[27] However, as the decade wore on, Talbot participated in fewer public exhibitions, apparently suffering a career setback with the 1852 dissolution of the American Art-Union.
McEntee’s diary entry from that day suggests Talbot’s straitened circumstances at the time of his death: “There were quite a number of very nice looking people at the funeral.
