1820 - 1904
Twitchell spent his early years in his native village in New Hampshire but around 1841 he moved with his parents to near Troy, New York. He resided in the Albany area for the rest of his life and there befriended many local artists including the sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer and the painters George Boughton, Charles Loring Elliott, Edward Gay, and James and William Hart. Although he sold a painting with a religious theme to the American Art Union in 1849, he was best known as a portraitist. In fact, it was said during his lifetime that he had painted more governors of New York than any other artist. He began showing examples of his work at the Academy in 1846 and remained a regular exhibitor there into the 1890s.
