Update: Campo Rosillo lecture now available on Polk Museum's podcast

This lecture is now available in podcast format. Listen to season 2, episode 9 of Polk's America on the museum website, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify or Google Podcasts. 

Doctoral candidate Alba Campo Rosillo will deliver an online lecture on the portraits of James Knox Polk painted by George Peter Alexander Healy between 1846 and 1858 for the President James K. Polk Home and Museum. In this lecture, Campo Rosillo will discuss presidential portraiture in relation to Grand Manner aristocratic painting. She will reveal the strong grip the plantation economy had on the country's political power, as well as the intimate connection between cotton plantations and aristocratic life-styles at the time. The lecture, titled "From President to Aristocrat: G.P.A. Healy's Portraits of President James Polk," will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, from 8 p.m. EDT to 9 p.m. EDT. Registrat​ion is required.

The lecture's content is part of Campo Rosillo's dissertation work on Healy's portraiture. Entitled "Artistry and Industry: The Portraiture of George Peter Alexander Healy, 1830-1871," her dissertation studies George Peter Alexander Healy's portraiture to reveal how the artist embraced industrial culture. Industrial capitalism shaped Healy's career as a source of patronage as well as inspiration, sparking the artist to redefine the portrait genre and rethink its marketability. By looking at Healy's engagement with industrial networks, materials and methods, as well as resources, venues and volume, Campo Rosillo argues that Healy both learned from and shaped industrial culture with his portrait practice.