Simon Kenton (1755-1836) was a frontiersman whose exploits in Kentucky rival that of his more-celebrated contemporary Daniel Boone. Louis Morgan, a Pennsylvania artist who worked in Kentucky and Tennessee, painted a portrait of the aged Kenton which is now in the collection of the Ohio Historical Society. In 1834 J.B. Longacre, a portraitist and engraver, commissioned fellow engraver R.W. Dodson to reproduce the Morgan painting for Longacre’s National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans. The painting being sold by Payne Fine Arts is a mid-19th century copy of that engraving by an unknown artist in a period frame.

Condition: conserved by Wiebold Studio of Cincinnati.

Provenance: purchased from the estate of a Central Kentucky doctor in Florida.