Early in life, James Frothingham tried his hand at drawing portraits and eventually at painting them. His father was a coach maker, and in the normal course of things he learned the trade in preparation to enter the business. He was more challenged, however, by the problems and promises of painting the finished vehicles than of building them. William Dunlap recounted at some length the imaginative, if somewhat comical, materials and methods Frothingham invented in his struggle to teach himself how to paint portraits. On a business trip to Lancaster, Massachusetts, he met the portraitist Fabius Whiting, who had had some instruction from Gilbert Stuart and passed along to Frothingham what he knew of professional practice. Thus enabled, the young man made such strides that in about 1806 he gave up coach-making for portraiture.
Eventually Frothingham got up the courage to show his work to Stuart, who had recently settled in Boston. Dunlap reported that Stuart's advice on seeing the example of his work that Frothingham first brought him was: "Coach painting, sir. Stick to it. You had better be a tea-waterman's horse in New York than a portrait-painter anywhere." Yet Stuart welcomed Frothingham's continued visits, gave him much valuable criticism, and finally praised his work. Not surprisingly, Frothingham's painting style greatly resembled Stuart's.
Frothingham first established his practice as a portraitist in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1826 he moved to New York. He began exhibiting his portraits at the American Academy of Fine Arts the following year and at the National Academy of Design in the annual exhibition of 1828. Although his career in New York was not notably distinguished, he found a steady supply of patrons, judging by the fact that he showed a quantity of portraits in almost every Academy annual through 1853. By 1830 he could be described as "an excellent portrait painter, who has laboured along with every difficulty, but who has now reached a stand that will insure profitable business."
In 1838 Frothingham was elected to a year's term on the Academy Council; in 1844 he was returned to the Council for a year in the post of corresponding secretary; and in 1846-47 he served a final year as a member of Council. By this time he had been living in Brooklyn for at least two years, probably longer. In the 1840 annual exhibition he had shown a portrait of General Hamilton, lent by the Brooklyn Hamilton Literary Association. The Brooklyn Common Council lent his Ex-Mayor of Brooklyn, C. P. Smith to the 1842 annual. The prospects for patronage in that city probably prompted Frothingham to move there; it remained his home for the rest of his life.
JPH
