Washington Bogart Cooper and the Portraits of Williamson County – Brushstrokes of the Heart

In the golden light of antebellum Franklin, when parlors glowed with polished mahogany and the faint perfume of garden roses drifted through tall windows, Washington Bogart Cooper set up his easel. With steady hand and searching eye, he caught forever the proud tilt of a young heir in his broadcloth suit and the soft radiance of a daughter in silken gown, her gaze both innocent and knowing. Cooper would become the most popular portrait artist in the nineteenth century in the Nashville area.

These were not mere likenesses, but the very soul of Williamson County itself, brushed onto canvas in strokes of oil and light. In his portraits, Franklin’s families live still, faces that whisper of courtships, fortunes, and the passage of time, reminding us that beauty and memory are as inseparable as paint and canvas. Known in his day as “the man of a thousand portraits,” Cooper may in truth have painted more than two thousand likenesses across Tennessee, leaving behind a gallery of Southern memory unmatched in scope or sentiment.

A Boy with Charred Cane Stalks

In the early years of the nineteenth century, when Tennessee was still a raw land of wolves, cane brakes, and the scent of hearth smoke rising into crisp night skies, a boy was born who would one day become known as the man of a thousand portraits. Washington Bogart Cooper came into the world on September 18, 1802, near Jonesborough, the third of nine children. His childhood was spent not in salons of learning, but on the rough fringes of the frontier, first near Carthage and later Shelbyville, where he discovered art in the most unlikely places.

With no brushes or fine pigments at his disposal, young Washington used the charred stalks of cane from the fireplace and turned the walls of his father’s barn into his first canvas. He copied faces from Bibles on scraps of paper, studying light by firelight and shadows by moonlight, learning expressions by watching the play of worry and joy across his mother’s face. It was said that long before he had training, he already had the rarest gift of all: not simply the eye of an artist, but the heart of one.

Journeyman of Faces

At twenty-five, fate intervened. A traveling painter named St. Leger happened upon the crude but astonishing sketches in the Cooper barn and invited young Cooper to study briefly with him in Shelbyville. The apprenticeship lasted only a week, but it lit a fire that carried him farther afield. In Philadelphia, he studied under Thomas Sully and Henry Inman, refining his grasp of anatomy, color, and classical form. In Murfreesboro, he absorbed lessons under Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl, famed portraitist of Andrew Jackson.

By 1830, Cooper had returned to Nashville, a city still more frontier than capital, but one already brimming with ambition. There he opened a modest studio and began the work that would make his name. From 1837 to 1848, his account book shows he averaged thirty-five portraits a year, amounting in his lifetime to more than 2,100 works. For each portrait he asked $75, a fair sum in its day, but modest for the permanence he bestowed. Sometimes sitters never paid him at all, and in his ledgers he marked their names simply as “dead horses.”

Yet, his genius lay not in what he earned but in what he gave. His paintings possessed dignity and warmth. He traveled dusty roads with an easel and palette, staying in the homes of his sitters, painting entire families in parlors filled with cedar scent and children’s laughter. He painted governors and farmers, widows and children, always with the same compassion. His portraits did not flatter or exaggerate. They told the truth, but tenderly.

Marriage, Studio, and Family

In 1839, Cooper married Annie Litton of Dublin, Ireland, a steady-hearted woman who became both his partner and his anchor. He was thirty-seven, no longer the wandering youth with charred sticks, but a man intent on rooting himself in Nashville’s soil. Few were the days that he would continue to grace the homes of his subjects to paint their portraits. Together they made a home, and in a modest but cheerful apartment in West Nashville, Washington built his studio. Visitors remembered it not as a place of business, but “a room of remembrance,” where sunlight spilled across unfinished canvases and children’s voices mingled with the scratch of brush against canvas.

Washington and Annie Cooper had four children. Their first son, James, died in 1843 at only three years old, a loss that altered his father’s art forever. Afterward, portraits of children bore an almost unbearable tenderness, light softened as though through tears.

Their other children lived to adulthood: James Litton Cooper, Kate Cooper Palmer, and Joseph Litton Cooper. A portrait of the three siblings, painted with quiet warmth, survives in the Tennessee State Museum, a hymn in oil from a father’s hand.

Above is the headstone of their young son James, lost too soon. He was only three when he passed. James is buried alongside his parents, all with modest headstones, in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville. 

The War and the Frock Coat

When war came in 1861, Washington’s son James “Jimmy” Litton Cooper enlisted in the 20th Tennessee Infantry, Company C. There he served beside his childhood friend, Tod Carter of Franklin. The two young men, from different stations in life. One was the son of a painter, the other heir to the Carter House, both bound by camaraderie and the fire of youth.

On November 30, 1864, during the tumultuous events surrounding the Battle of Franklin, Tod Carter was mortally wounded only steps from his family home. He was carried inside and died in the same room where he had played as a boy. James Cooper survived, but memory bound him forever to that day.

In the Carter House collection today lies a coat that carries the whispers of their friendship. The frock coat belonged to James Cooper, likely stitched in Nashville by his sister, its homespun cloth lined with fabric nearly identical to a jacket in the Tennessee State Museum. Family tradition tells that the last time James saw Tod alive, his friend was wearing that very coat. James had lent Tod his coat, and Tod headed off towards his family home wearing it, pass in hand that enabled him to separate from his regiment. Was Tod wearing James’ coat when he met his fate in the shot that would eventually take his life? That is a fact only known to Tod Carter’s family who retrieved him from the battle-ridden garden beside their home the morning after the battle. Days later, Tod Carter passed, but following his death the coat found its way home to James Cooper, preserved like a relic. It is one of only two jackets from Franklin still in existence, and it bears not just thread and cloth but the sorrow of friendship and survival.

For Washington Bogart Cooper, the war was not only the loss of patrons or disruption of commissions. It was the anguish of a father who painted tenderness by day and wondered if his son would live to see another morning.

When the roar of cannon faded, James Litton Cooper, eldest son of Washington Bogart Cooper, turned from battlefields to pastures. On his 320-acre farm along Riverside Drive near Shelby Park in Nashville, he became a pioneer breeder of Jersey cattle, his days marked by the rhythms of the herd rather than the bugle’s call. Like a quiet echo of his father’s art, James’s life spoke of patience and endurance, and in time all three Cooper children—James, Joseph, and Catherine—lived into adulthood, carrying forward the legacy of the painter who had captured so many lives on canvas.

A Brother with a Brush

Washington’s brother William Brown Cooper (1811–1890) also became an artist. Their bond was more than blood: Washington funded William’s European education, believing fervently in his younger brother’s promise. William returned and painted in Tennessee and Kentucky, and so close were their styles that art historians today struggle to distinguish between them. Both favored gentle lighting, dignified posture, and naturalism without harshness.

Some portraits once attributed to Washington have been reassigned to William, and some remain in dispute. The confusion is a testament to how alike they were, and how deeply Washington shaped his brother’s career. Many works thought to be one or the other of the Cooper brothers, are still up to the individual interpretation of the viewer or art scholar as to which painted many of them. 

The Planters and Their Houses

Cooper’s true genius is visible in the faces of Williamson County, where he painted the planter elite, the county’s leaders, and their children, leaving behind a visual history as potent as any diary. To walk through Franklin today is to pass houses where his canvases once hung, steady witnesses to weddings, wakes, and war. Although rare, there are still homes in Middle Tennessee that still have the world of Cooper adorning their walls. It would be impossible to create a complete inventory of all of Washington Bogart Cooper’s work in the Franklin area, as many pieces have fallen to the wayside, destroyed through the ravages of time, tumults of war or lost as they were handed down to those unconcerned with saving such relics. But, many remain and some of Cooper’s exquisite works and their associated homes and families are detailed here. 

Beechwood Hall: The Mayberrys, Baileys, and Dedmans

Rising like a temple to the cotton kingdom, Beechwood Hall was built in the 1850s by H.G.W. Mayberry, its massive columns and broad portico proclaiming prosperity.

Later tied to the Bailey and Dedman families, the house stood as one of Middle Tennessee’s most majestic Greek Revival homes. Within its halls, music from parlor pianos drifted into candlelit nights, and dances filled the ballroom with swirling gowns.

Cooper captured members of the Dedman, Bailey and Mayberry family, children and young people arranged with gentle intimacy, their faces glowing with innocence. Beechwood’s portraits, like its marble mantels, carried the weight of lineage. As one local historian later wrote, 

“Beechwood was less a house than a statement, a world unto itself, and its portraits were its heralds.”

Below, Cooper painted young Louise Bailey, her portrait tender, her beauty luminous in soft light. 

These portraits of the youngest members of members of the Beechwood Hall family adorned the walls of the home for years and have been so lovingly cared for, are still showpieces in the homes of descendants. The two latter portraits may be attributed to either Cooper brother. 

Everbright Mansion: The Cannons and Bosticks

Everbright Mansion is located off Columbia Avenue in Franklin, Tennessee and was where local tradition claims the first shots of the Battle of Franklin were fired.

On a rise north of Franklin stood Everbright, the home of Richard and Rebecca Cannon Bostick. Rebecca was the daughter of Governor Newton Cannon, one of Tennessee’s most celebrated figures. Although Governor Cannon has ties to other parts of Williamson County, including Triune and Allisona, his connection to Everbright through his daughter Rebecca Cannon Bostick is undeniable.

Built with commanding elegance, Everbright’s very name bespoke brightness, ambition, and endurance. To sit for Cooper at Everbright was to join a lineage that traced both political power and refined gentility. Many of the Cannon and Bostick portraits were painted by Cooper around 1845.

Although we will never know where they were painted by him, one can only imagine Cooper setting up residence alongside the family at Everbright, and one by one capturing their likenesses on canvas; just as he had with so many other sitters  throughout the region. 

Cooper painted Governor Newton Cannon himself around 1845, seated with statesmanlike poise. His daughter Rebecca Cannon Bostick appears graceful and intelligent, her portrait paired with that of her husband Richard W.H. Bostick, whose upright bearing conveys the quiet authority of a man of standing.

The daughters Macon Cannon, Rachel Adaline Cannon Maney, and Lavinia Cannon Thompson also appear, their ringlets and silks rendered with affectionate detail.

Cooper painted four of Governor Newton Cannon’s daughters. Together these portraits testify to a family whose influence radiated across Williamson county.

In its latter years, Everbright was the scene for many parties for young people. The Nashville Banner remarked upon the demise of Everbright, 

“The beautiful old Everbright mansion of Franklin, once the scene of joyous Southern banquets and dances, is being torn down. DOGS HOWL under the ruins of Everbright, once a mecca for antebellum Southern gallantry. Weeds thrust upwards through flagstone that have known the tread of many a merry couple.”

The Harris-Maury Circle: Treelawn and the Harris-McEwen House

Cooper’s brush found its way into the tangled roots of Franklin’s founding family, the Maurys. Abram Maury, the visionary who laid out Franklin in 1799, left behind not only streets and survey lines but a legacy embodied in his children, who carried the town into the antebellum era.

Among them was James Philip Maury (1797–1859), a lawyer and planter who inherited both his father’s land and his civic spirit. At Treelawn, the Maury home west of Franklin, James presided as patriarch of the next generation. Cooper’s portrait of him reveals a man of gravity and intelligence, his steady gaze bridging the raw energy of Abram’s founding years with the cultivated refinement of his heirs.

Abram’s daughter Martha Fontaine Maury Harris (1801–1867) extended the family’s reach even further  when she married Carey Allen Harris (1806–1842). Harris, editor of the Nashville Republican, and later served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He was a man as ambitious as he was controversial.

Carey Allen Harris was the youngest Secretary of War in U.S. history. In Cooper’s attributed portrait, his sharp features reflect intellect and determination, while Martha’s likeness reveals a woman of grace and quiet authority, heir to Franklin’s founding bloodline.

Their daughter, Mary Fontaine Harris Handy (1833-1855) also sat for Cooper. Her portrait carries forward the intertwined legacy of Maury’s and Harrises, binding Franklin’s origins to its antebellum flowering. Mary only lived to be twenty, dying shortly after her marriage to a local Franklin physician. She is buried alongside her entire family in the beautifully preserved Abram Maury Cemetery in Franklin. 

These portraits, preserved across generations, are more than likenesses. They are anchors to place. At Treelawn, shaded by great trees along the Harpeth, Abram’s children gathered, their portraits gracing parlors steeped in memory. In downtown Franklin, the Harris connection was embodied in the Harris–McEwen House on Fair Street. Originally built in the Federal style, later expanded by the McEwens into one of the most elegant antebellum residences, the house stood as a symbol of the family’s endurance and refinement. Its halls, like Treelawn’s, bore Cooper’s works; painted echoes of lineage and belonging.

The portrait of former Mayor of Franklin during the Civil War, John Brown McEwen, is displayed at the Harris-McEwen house. McEwen lived in the Harris-McEwen home after Carey and Martha Harris. His portrait is often attributed to Washington Bogart Cooper.

Carnton:  The McGavocks, Winders and Grundys 

Few homes in Franklin, Tennessee carry the weight of memory like Carnton, built in 1826 by Randal McGavock and passed to his son John and daughter-in-law Carrie Winder McGavock.

Carnton was elegance in brick, but on November 30, 1864, it became a field hospital for hundreds of wounded and dying after the Battle of Franklin. Its wide gallery, stained with blood, remains one of Tennessee’s most hallowed places.

Elizabeth Irwin McGavock Harding, the daughter of Randal and Sarah Rodger’s Daugherty McGavock, was brought up at Carnton. After she married, she moved to Belle Meade in Nashville.

Here, long before that dreadful day, Cooper painted Carrie McGavock, then a young woman of eighteen, luminous and poised. He portrayed Colonel John McGavock, stern yet dignified.

Col. John McGavock worked as private secretary for Felix Grundy in his Washington, D.C. office. After his father’s death, he inherited Carnton plantation in Franklin, Tennessee from his father.

Most poignant of all are the portraits of the McGavock children, lost too soon. Mary, Martha, and John Randal, depicted as angelic figures drifting in clouds, still present today on the wall of John and Carrie McGavock’s bedroom at Carnton. To look upon them today is to understand a mother’s grief and a painter’s compassion. All three children passed away young. 

Louise Winder Campbell was the sister of Carrie Winder McGavock of Carnton and is among extended family members portrayed on canvas by Washington Bogart Cooper.

Her portrait was displayed amongst the McGavock family portraits at Carnton during their October 1992 homecoming event. 

Carrie McGavock’s parents, Martha Grundy and Van Perkins Winder are attributed to Washington Bogart Cooper and are on display at their  former home, Ducros, in Louisiana.

Portraits of Felix Grundy exist by George Dury and John Wood Dodge; a canvas attributed to Washington B. Cooper is cited in Tennessee collections. Attributions have been historically mixed with his brother William.

Ann Philips Grundy was the grandmother of Carrie McGavock and shared even more connections to Carnton and Williamson County.

Sarah Whitfield McPhail Nichol: The Last Face of Cottonwood

Some women are remembered by their deeds, others only by their faces. Sarah Whitfield, born in 1816 to Wilkins and Mary Sturdivant Whitfield on land south of Franklin later called Cottonwood, left few records but one unforgettable portrait.

At just fifteen, she married Dr. Daniel McPhail, Franklin’s physician, whose office stood close to the town square. When he died in 1846 serving as a surgeon in the Mexican War, Sarah’s world collapsed.

His young nephew, Dr. Daniel Cliffe, soon inherited the home and practice, and by then had married Sarah’s sister Jennie Whitfield. This arrangement bound the families together. Sarah eventually remarried, moving to live with her new husband, another physician; in Hickman County. Sarah’s portrait was painted by Cooper around the time of her second marriage. Could this portrait of her have been a wedding gift from her new husband? 

What endures is Sarah’s likeness. Draped in silk cream shawl and wearing a velvety burgundy gown, her delicate features and steady gaze reveal both beauty and sorrow, as though she bore secrets never written down. Sarah was around forty years old when this portrait was painted. For years the portrait hung in the home of historian T. Vance Little, a silent witness to a story half-lost to time. In her face we glimpse not only the woman, but the beginning years of Franklin itself. Read about the McPhail-Cliffe House here.

The Harrison House on Columbia Pike

South of Franklin, along the Columbia Pike, stood the home of the Harrison family, a sturdy residence that reflected beauty and permanence. Like the columned temples of Beechwood or Carnton, the Harrison House spoke of prosperity, its brick walls sheltering generations whose roots sank deep into the soil of West Harpeth.

Many events of the antebellum era transpired at Harrison House, with its significance relating to the events leading up to the Battle of Franklin setting its place in history. William Harrison is the only Washington Bogart Cooper portrait to survive associated with the Harrison family, although there were likely more. 

Aspen Grove: The McEwens

A mystery McEwen woman from the Rick Warwick collection may have been one of Washington Bogart Cooper’s exquisite works. 

North of Franklin stood Aspen Grove, first a gathering ground for Andrew Jackson’s soldiers, later the home of the McEwen family. By the time Cooper may have entered its halls, Aspen Grove had grown into a plantation of stature, shaded by trees and filled with the laughter of children and the quiet command of its patriarch.

Above, a recreation of a badly damaged unattributed portrait of Rebecca Brown McEwen (1799-1827) (Likely painted around 1825) The original portrait is now in the Rick Warwick Collection. The portrait could very likely have been painted by Washington Bogart Cooper, as it was his style and fits within the time period. 

He may have painted Christopher Ervin McEwen, a soldier turned planter, his sternness softened by the light in Cooper’s hand. Beside him, Rebecca Brown McEwen, serene and composed, appears as the matronly heart of the family.

Above, a recreation of a badly damaged portrait of Christopher McEwen (1799-1868) of Aspen Grove, the original is part of the Rick Warwick collection. This work could likely be attributed to Washington Bogart Cooper, as it is his style and the time period fits. 

Their portraits capture not just individuals but transformation itself: pioneers who became planters, soldiers who became stewards of the land. Aspen Grove’s portraits are more than art; they are chapters of a story. They are symbols of muskets traded for ledgers, of wilderness turned to order, of families who endured.

Midway: The Hayes Family of Brentwood

South of Brentwood, in the Midway community, Cooper painted one of his most tender works: Thomas Pointer Hayes (1858–1862). The boy sits with his dog, eyes wide, innocence shining. Yet the portrait became cruelly ironic, for Thomas died young, his likeness preserved only in paint and his exquisite headstone. 

At Midway Cemetery, not far from the family home, Tommie’s grave still rests. His portrait remains a reminder that Cooper’s genius lay in capturing both the light of childhood and the shadow of its fragility.

Richmond Place on Del Rio 

Painted by Washington Bogart Cooper, this portrait depicts a descendant of Williamson County’s founding Morton family. Her kinsman, John Morton, served as the county’s first sheriff in 1799. Cecilia became mistress of Richmond Place on Del Rio Pike and is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Franklin.

Other Famous Works

One of Cooper’s most notable works was of President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875). He became president following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and was the first U.S. president to be impeached. From Greeneville, Tennessee, Johnson served as the 17th President of the United States, from 1865 to 1869.

Another famous portrait was Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), a prominent preacher, religious reformer, and educator. He’s best known as one of the leading figures in the Restoration Movement and helped launch what became the Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ.

The Final Years

Washington Bogart Cooper painted until the end of his long life. He completed more than 2,100 portraits, averaging thirty-five a year, filling parlors, state houses, and churches with the faces of Tennessee’s people. His sitters ranged from nearly every Tennessee governor to children whose names have been lost but whose faces glow still.

In 1885, three years before his death, he painted a self-portrait, gifting it to the Tennessee Historical Society. In it, his eyes look back not with vanity but with gentle resignation, as if to say his work had always been for others, never for himself.

He died on March 30, 1888, at eighty-five, and was buried beside Annie at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.

Washington Bogart Cooper gave Tennessee more than two thousand faces. They hang today in the halls of Carnton, in the Tennessee State Museum, and in the homes of descendants who still look upon them with reverence. He painted not for glory, nor for gold, but for memory — and in memory his work endures.

Many thanks to Leonora Clifford and her brother John Green, owners of the Beechwood Hall collections, for the donation of their time and opening up the Clifford home so that we may see and obtain photos of their gorgeous Cooper originals. Thanks to the Tennessee Portrait Project, the Battle of Franklin Trust, Oaklands Museum in Murfreesboro, Joseph Cashia Collection, Tennessee State Museum, and especially Rick Warwick (Williamson County Historian) for the use of photos of these amazing portraits! We are forever indebted! 

Sharing the forgotten stories of the women of historic Franklin,

About Kimberly Clutsam
About Lovely Franklin

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References

• James A. Hoobler, Portraits in Tennessee: The Work of Washington Bogart Cooper, Tennessee State Museum.
  
• Rick Warwick, The Portraits of Williamson County (Franklin, TN: Williamson County Historical Society, 2010).
  
• Tennessee Portrait Project (online database of Tennessee sitters and portraits).
  
• Tennessee State Museum, Cooper account books and portrait collections.
  
• Tennessee Historical Society, Cooper self-portrait and family materials.
  
• Eric Jacobson, For Cause & For Country: A Study of the Battle of Franklin.
  
• Battle of Franklin Trust, Carter House Museum textile collection (James L. Cooper’s frock coat).
  
• Nashville Banner archives, obituaries of Cooper and his family.