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Twenty years prior to the American Revolution John Singleton Copley emerged in Boston as the most distinguished of colonial portraitists. He is hailed as the first great painter in the history of American art. Rembrandt created his distinctive portraits with a small palette of colors dominated by dark earth tones and golden highlights.

Many of Bernard Clendenin's portrait paintings such as Barry Goldwater, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul, Susan Strasburg, Lindsey Wagner and others are not available for display on our site as they are owned by individual collectors.

Clendenin states that he usually does not paint people he is close to because his emotional attachment to the individual makes it difficult for him to accomplish his artistic best. One look at the image titled Wife's Portrait: Arlene M. Clendenin would dispel that myth.