Matthew Pratt

[source: National Portrait Gallery]

Artist Matthew Pratt began learning his craft at the age of fifteen as an assistant in his uncle's commercial painting establishment. After a seven-year apprenticeship, he opened his own shop in Philadelphia and began painting likenesses. In 1764 he went to England to improve his artistic capacities under the tutelage of Benjamin West. While there, he painted the most famous of early American group portraits, The American School, depicting West instructing some of his colonial protégés.

In 1768 Pratt returned to Philadelphia, where he earned a comfortable living primarily as a portraitist. The economic upheavals of the American Revolution, however, forced him to resort to sign-painting for his livelihood, and it was said that the unusual beauty of his signs for Philadelphia's commercial establishments made them unique.