The Pythagorean Puzzle of Patrick Lyon

Abstract

Among the best-known products of early nineteenth-century American art are John Neagle's portraits of Pat Lyon at the Forge of 1825–26 and 1829 (Figs. 1 and 2). Works that launched their then-novice artist into distinction as a portraitist, the twin versions of Pat Lyon have since become emblems of their period.1 With increasing frequency they appear in surveys of American art history as evidence, even in portraiture, of a development towards a less idealized, more veristic realism, a realism whose sources are the legible signifiers of everyday (one might say democratic) experience.2 Corollary to this thesis is the opinion that the iconography of Neagle's portraits of Lyon, like that of many contemporary American works, is largely self-evident, a matter merely of the correct identification of their major features and of the narration of their story.3 The viewer is encouraged to accept the works at face value: their apparent secularization and individualization of subject matter would seem to preclude any ...