The nine-foot painting of Gen. William McIntosh (c. 1778-1825) that hangs today at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, has long been regarded as a masterpiece of frontier art. Marie Bankhead Owen who directed the archives from 1920 to 1955, characterized the painting in 1946 as our "most valued treasure" and the "gem of our collection ," but Mrs. Owen, like many others of her day, misattributed the painting to the well-known artist Washington All ton (1779-1843), one of the earliest Romantic painters in America. Today we know that the McIntosh painting's true creator was Nathan Negus, assisted by his brother Joseph- young itinerant artists from Massachusetts. Only in the past few years has Nathan Negus become the subject of intense study, and though he was prolific in his short life, few of his works have been definitively identified; however, based on the available evidence, it seems clear that Negus was the most talented practitioner of fine arts in Alabama during the early statehood years, and the McIntosh portrait, though painted in Georgia, is the most striking artifact from that period.
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