The most well-known person to live in the Jack Jouett House was not Jack himself, but his son Matthew Harris Jouett, who became one of the antebellum era’s most notable artists and the finest portrait painter in Kentucky’s history. The third child and second son of Jack Jouett, Matthew was born in Mercer County on April 22, 1788. He showed a love of art from an early age; one of his first drawings depicted an Indian who visited his father’s Woodford County home. Jack wanted his son to become a lawyer and sent him to Transylvania College in Lexington, and then to study law with George Bibb, Chief Justice of the Appellate Court of Kentucky. Despite his legal studies, Matthew remained interested in art, and he began painting miniatures for prominent citizens in Lexington. It was also in Lexington that he married Margaret “Peggy” Henderson Allen, whom he first met while at college, on May 25, 1812.
Matthew was one of many Kentuckians to enlist in the War of 1812, beginning the war as a lieutenant in the 3rd Mounted Regiment of Kentucky Volunteers and finishing it as a captain, having served at Tippecanoe under General William Henry Harrison, who spoke favorably of him. One of Matthew’s duties was to keep the company payrolls, which he accidentally lost. He spent much of the rest of his life paying back the full sum of six thousand dollars. When he left military service in January 1815, he decided to pursue painting as a full-time career, opening his own Lexington studio. By this time the Kentucky frontier was changing into a settled and sophisticated region, and wealthy citizens could afford to commission portraits of family members and dignitaries to decorate their homes.
Matthew was successful, but he wanted to learn more. In 1816 he traveled to Philadelphia and then on to Boston, where he studied for several months under the great artist Gilbert Stuart, famous for his portraits of Revolutionary-era figures. The two grew very close; Matthew named a son after Stuart, who nicknamed his favorite student “Kentucky.” One visitor to the studio remembered that Stuart thought Matthew “was the only artist he ever thought worthy of giving instructions to.” When he returned to Lexington, Matthew was able to raise the price of his portraits to fifty dollars each. In the winter months he traveled to New Orleans and other cities in the Deep South to pick up additional work, which brought in the extra income he needed but took him away from his wife and family. In his letters he complained about how badly he missed them.
Some of Matthew’s notable works include portraits of Henry Clay (the great Kentucky statesman who led the Whig Party and tried to prevent the outbreak of civil war by crafting compromise solutions) and Isaac Shelby (militia commander in the Revolutionary War and Kentucky’s first governor). His most famous and spectacular work is the full-length portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution. Lafayette’s 1825 tour of America was a cause for great celebration, and the Kentucky legislature wanted to celebrate his visit to their state by commissioning a portrait by Jouett. Matthew based his painting on an earlier work in Washington, D.C., and then filled in key details during Lafayette’s one-hour visit to his Lexington studio on May 17, 1825. This impressive painting still hangs in Frankfort’s Old State Capitol.
Today there are several hundred paintings attributed to Matthew Jouett in museums and galleries across the country. He would have produced many more, were it not for his untimely death of an unexpected sickness on August 10, 1827 at only thirty-nine years of age. Despite the fact that his career was cut short, many art historians still consider him to be one of the greatest painters of the early nineteenth century.