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Matthew Harris Jouett
Portrait Painter
April 22, 1788 - August 10,1827
Jouett was the son of Sallie Robards and Jack Jouett, a hero of the American Revolution. The Jouett House Historic Site near Versailles, Kentucky commemorates this Kentucky family.
Matthew Jouett served as a lieutenant of the 28th infantry in the War of 1812. He was promoted to captain. Although he had studied law at Transylvania College, after the war, he turned his full attention to painting. He studied portraiture in Boston with Gilbert Stuart in 1816. Jouett painted portraits of many early Kentuckians like Isaac Shelby, Henry Clay and George Rogers Clark. While studying with Stuart, he painted a portrait of Thomas Jefferson from the studies that Stuart had done.
Most of Jouett’s portraits were never signed. After his untimely death in 1827 his family was left to try and catalog his work. Jouett was buried in Lexington near his home, but he and his wife we reinterred in cave Hill Cemetery in 1893.
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