(1) Name: Oliver FRAZER
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Birth: 1808
Death: 1864 Age: 56

Misc. Notes
OLIVER FRAZER [1]
BOURBON COUNTY
(1808-1864)

For details of the life of this Kentucky portrait and miniature painter, the reader is referred to the section devoted to sketches of the artists.

Two other portraits of him are preserved, a self portrait owned by a cousin and step-granddaughter, Mrs. Edward Nally (Lee Warren Redd) of New York, and one painted from a photograph in later life by Benoni Irwin, which Mrs. Nally allowed the John Bradford Historical Society of Lexington to add to its collection.

The portrait illustrated was painted in Paris, France, by James De Veaux, a fellow artist from South Carolina. Returning to America soon after its presentation, Frazer hung it in his Lexington studio. After his marriage to Martha Bell Mitchell in 1838, he had the opportunity to buy the home of his wife's aunt, Mrs. Waller Bullock Redd, following the death of her husband in 1843. Here it hung for more than ninety years, until the death of the painter's granddaughter, Fanny Frazer Redd, when it was acquired by her niece, the only great-grandchild of the artist. Today it hangs in an early house in Paris, next door to the place where Robert and Alexander Frazer, uncle and father of the painter, did their first silversmithing in Kentucky.

Oil on canvas, 17V2" X 151/2". By janies De Veaux, 1837
Data from the owner: Mrs. Robert T. Gaitskill (Elizabeth Redd), Paris
Print from the late Miss Katherine Bradley, Georgetown


Sources
1. Ante-Bellum Portraitures, pp. 16-17