Ann Hall

Ann Hall
A self-portrait of the artist, a detail from the family group portrait, Ann Hall, Her Sister Eliza Hall Ward, and Her Nephew Henry Hall Ward of 1828
Born	1792 Pomfret, Connecticut
Died	1863 New York City
Nationality	American
Education	Alexander Robertson
Known for	Painting
Awards	Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1833

Ann (or Anne) Hall (1792–1863) was an American painter and miniaturist.

Ann Hall has been described as the most successful miniature painter active in early nineteenth-century New York, renowned for her engaging portraits, especially of children and young brides. Although many of her compositions strike modern audiences as sentimental, her popularity during her lifetime and the significance of her career are attested by the high prices paid for her miniatures (often five hundred dollars per commission) and her election to the National Academy of Design, New York. She has been credited for inspiring a renaissance in the technique of painting miniatures on ivory in the United States.

Hall was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, the sixth of eleven surviving children of Jonathan (or John) Hall, a prominent physician, and his wife, the former Bathesheba Mumford. Her considerable artistic talent was encouraged by her family and at a young age she was experimenting with several different techniques, including cutting silhouettes, modeling figures in wax, and executing flower pictures and still lifes in watercolor and pencil.

Mrs. Jonathan Hall (Bathsheba Mumford), the Artist's Mother, 1838. Miniature on ivory, 3 1/2 x 3 in. Private collection, Hillsborough, California

Charles Henry Hall, the Artist's Brother, undated. Miniature on ivory, 2 5/8 x 2 1/8 in. On the art market in November 1946

Ann Hall, Her Sister Eliza Hall Ward, and Her Nephew Henry Hall Ward, 1828. Miniature on ivory, 4 1/4 x 4 1/4 in., New-York Historical Society, New York, New York

Hall visited the home of her mother's family in Newport, Rhode Island with an elder sister. There she learned to sketch and paint in oil and make miniatures in watercolors on ivory from the Samuel King, one of the teachers of Gilbert Stuart.

In about 1808, Hall traveled to New York City to study oil painting with Alexander Robertson. During her tenure in his studio, she viewed the temporary exhibition of old master paintings from the collection of Colonel John Trumbull, painter and private secretary to John Jay, which had been amassed when Trumbull was active in London and Paris. Hall also studied the old masters in the collection of her brother Charles Henry Hall, a businessman who frequently traveled to Europe and acquired a group of watercolors, portrait miniatures, and oil paintings while abroad, including a series of copies after original compositions by Italian masters such as Tintoretto and Guido Reni. As Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein has observed, what has been described by critics as the "glowing 'old master' color" of her miniatures resulted from her close study of early modern art. Her interest in old master painting also inspired her to adapt complex multi-figured compositional elements derived from European religious paintings to group portraits; as one of her early biographers noted, her portraits of children resembled "elegant and well-arranged bouquet[s]."