James Frothing ham was born in the year 1786-1864 and he was an American portrait painter in Massachusetts and New York.

Life and work

James Frothing ham was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the Boston area, he deliberate as a student of Gilbert Stuart, becoming a portraitist of talent, and Stuart is quote as having said of one of Frothing ham’s head portraits, “No man in Boston but me can paint so good a head.” Frothing ham was very much helped by Gilbert Stuart’s criticisms and encouragement, although originally his Nestor had advised him to adopt another, less precarious means of earning a livelihood. There is a complete portrait of Samuel Dexter, by Frothing ham, in the Harvard Memorial Hall, in which Dexter, wearing a white wig and a red cloak atop a black coat, holds a book in his hand, and appears lost in thought. The flesh coloring in the painting is rather dry and parchment-like, but overall, the color is pleasant-sounding. Dunlap noted that heads depicted by James Frothing ham were painted with enormous truth, freedom, and excellence.

Frothing ham would have been a local participant to the younger Chester Harding (1792–1866), but in 1826, James Frothing ham moved to Brooklyn in New York City.