Jesse Talbot

Jesse Talbot (April 1, 1805 – January 29/30, 1879) was an American landscape painter and a friend of the poet Walt Whitman. Born in Dighton, Massachusetts, Talbot worked for the American Tract Society and other evangelical Christian organizations in New York City before becoming a professional artist, first exhibiting in the National Academy of Design in 1838. His work was often favorably compared to that of Thomas Cole and other leaders of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. Talbot developed a friendship with Walt Whitman in the 1850s. The notebook in which Whitman first wrote down the ideas for Leaves of Grass is known as the “Talbot Wilson notebook” because Talbot’s name and address (Wilson Street in Brooklyn, New York) are written on the inside front cover. Talbot died in relative obscurity in 1879. Biography Early life and career Jesse Talbot was born April 1, 1805, in Dighton, Massachusetts, the youngest child of Josiah Talbot and Lydia Talbot (née Wheaton). Around the age of 15, he moved to Dedham, Massachusetts, to work in the pharmacy of his mother’s youngest sibling, Dr. Jesse Wheaton (1762/3 – November 5, 1847). By 1829, Talbot had moved to New York City, where he was employed by the American Tract Society at its headquarters on Nassau Street in Manhattan, then the center of the New York publishing world. He began by distributing tracts along the city’s wharves, but by 1834 he had been promoted to “Assistant Secretary.”  He served as “Recording Secretary” of the New-York Tract Society, an affiliate of the national organization. He also became involved with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Through that organization, he came into contact with the Reverend Richard Sluyter of Claverack, New York, whose daughter Mary Augusta he married in the Dutch Reformed church in that town in 1836. Artistic career