William Harrison Scarborough

William Harrison Scarborough (November 7, 1812 – August 16, 1871) was an American painter, active mainly as a portraitist. A native of Tennessee, he spent much of his career in South Carolina.

Scarborough was born in Dover, Tennessee to John and Sally Bosworth Scarborough, whose family origins were in Scarborough, Yorkshire. He often employed a family coat of arms dating back to the Wars of the Roses; one art historian noted that he "sealed his letters with a white rose as a memento of the sympathies of his family in days gone by." His father allowed him to travel on an educational trip when he was 16; the only paintings he had seen up until that point were those in the local tavern. Around 1828 he began the study of medicine in Cincinnati, but soon decided to become an artist instead, and he is known to have worked with Horace Harding and Henry Inman in that city. He may also have come to know Dr. Daniel Drake at the same time. He underwent more thorough training in Nashville under the tutelage of John C. Grimes in 1830. He is also known to have studied and worked in Florence, Tuscumbia, Cortland, and Athens, Alabama; Kingston, Rogersville, and Knoxville, Tennessee; and Georgia.

Scarborough married Sarah Ann Gaines in Dover on October 8, 1833. She died in childbirth on March 29, 1835, and he and his infant son John left Tennessee for Alabama, before settling in Charleston, South Carolina in 1836. It was in Charleston that he was provided with his first commissions when planter and lawyer John Miller asked him to paint some of his seven daughters; the artist married one of the seven, Miranda Eliza, on November 28, 1838, and the couple lived with her parents for a time before moving. Scarborough had opened a studio in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1836, and his father-in-law's connections soon ensured a steady stream of patronage there from families such as the DuBoses, Murrells, Furmans, and Lides. This dried up by 1843, and the artist and his wife relocated to Columbia, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

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