Commissioning a Portrait in Florida
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Florida. An award-winning artist with over four decades of professional experience, Hazel creates hand-painted oil portraits of exceptional quality for individuals, families, corporations, and institutions across the state.
From the boardroom to the family home, Hazel’s portraits have graced the walls of distinguished collectors, university halls, and corporate headquarters throughout Florida. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Florida Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Florida, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Florida and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
Portrait Services in Florida Communities
How to Commission a Portrait from Florida
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Florida. The process has been refined over hundreds of commissions to ensure a seamless experience for every client.
Step 1: Initial Consultation
The process begins with a complimentary consultation - by telephone, video call, or email - during which Hazel discusses your vision for the portrait. This covers the subject, preferred composition, size, background, clothing, and any particular details you would like to include. There is no obligation at this stage.
Step 2: Photographs & References
For clients in Florida, Hazel can work from professional photographs, high-quality personal photographs, or a combination of multiple reference images. She provides clear guidance on the types of photographs that produce the best results. Where feasible, live sittings can also be arranged.
Step 3: The Painting Process
Once the composition is agreed, Hazel begins painting. The process typically takes between six and twelve weeks depending on the complexity of the piece. Clients receive progress photographs at key stages so you can see the portrait taking shape and provide feedback before completion.
Step 4: Delivery & Framing
Completed portraits are professionally packaged for shipping. Shipping and framing costs are provided once the painting is complete. Hazel can also recommend master framers who specialise in fine art framing to complement your finished portrait. Clients in Florida typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Florida Choose Hazel Morgan
Hazel Morgan brings a rare combination of artistic excellence, professional reliability, and personal warmth to every commission. Here is what sets her apart:
Over 40 years of professional experience - Hazel has been painting portraits professionally since the early 1980s, amassing a body of work that spans hundreds of commissions for private, corporate, and institutional clients worldwide.
Award-winning recognition - Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and other prestigious venues. She is a member of several leading art societies.
A personal, one-to-one service - Unlike studio operations, every portrait is painted entirely by Hazel herself. You deal directly with the artist from first consultation through to delivery, ensuring your vision is faithfully realised.
International shipping expertise - Hazel regularly ships completed portraits to clients across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond. Every painting is professionally packaged to arrive in perfect condition.
Complete satisfaction guaranteed - Hazel works closely with each client throughout the painting process. Progress images are shared at every stage, and adjustments are made until you are completely happy with the finished portrait.
Frequently Asked Questions - Portrait Commissions in Florida
Hazel provides personalized quotations after an initial telephone consultation, during which she discusses your specific requirements. The consultation is complimentary and entirely without obligation. Please get in touch to arrange a convenient time to talk.
Not at all. The majority of Hazel’s commissions are painted from photographs, which makes the process convenient for clients in Florida and beyond. Hazel provides guidance on the best types of photographs to supply. Live sittings can be arranged where practical.
Most portraits are completed within six to twelve weeks from the start of painting, depending on the complexity of the commission. Hazel provides a realistic timeline during the initial consultation. Rush commissions can sometimes be accommodated for special occasions.
Hazel has extensive experience working with a range of photographic references, including older or lower-resolution images. She can often combine multiple photographs to create a single cohesive portrait. During the consultation, she will advise on whether your available photographs are suitable.
Completed portraits are professionally packaged using custom-built crating and shipped via insured courier directly to your address in Florida. Shipping and framing are quoted separately after the portrait is completed.
Client satisfaction is paramount. Hazel shares progress photographs at key stages throughout the painting process so you can provide feedback and request adjustments. This collaborative approach means that by the time the portrait is complete, it faithfully reflects your vision.
Why Hazel Loves Florida
Florida captivates Hazel Morgan in ways that speak directly to her passion for capturing the human spirit on canvas. What draws Hazel most is the remarkable diversity of faces, stories, and communities that make this state so visually and emotionally rich. She is drawn to the cultural depth of cities like St. Augustine, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States, where the Lightner Museum houses an extraordinary collection and the cobblestone streets of the historic district tell centuries of layered human history. Hazel admires the way communities here carry that history with genuine pride, and she finds it deeply inspiring that the subjects she paints often reflect such a vivid mix of heritage, warmth, and resilience. The natural world amplifies this feeling too - the Everglades National Park, with its sweeping sawgrass prairies and luminous sky, creates a quality of light that Hazel believes mirrors the openness and authenticity she strives to bring to every portrait she creates.
Beyond the landscapes, what captivates Hazel about Florida is the thriving, grounded arts culture woven into everyday life across the state. She greatly admires the creative energy of the Wynwood Arts District in Miami, where murals and galleries like the Wynwood Walls have transformed public space into a living celebration of artistic expression. The annual Gasparilla Festival of the Arts in Tampa, one of the most respected juried art festivals in the Southeast, speaks to the seriousness with which Floridians embrace visual art as a community tradition. Hazel is also drawn to the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, a world-class institution whose collections and architecture reflect the same aspiration toward beauty and permanence that guides her own portrait practice.
Ultimately, Hazel believes that great portraiture begins with genuine admiration for the people being painted, and Florida's communities - from the historic neighborhoods of Pensacola's Palafox Street to the family-centered culture surrounding Lake Eola Park in Orlando - offer an endless source of that admiration. The people of Florida carry stories worth honoring, and Hazel considers it a privilege to translate those stories into lasting, meaningful works of art.
Ready to Commission Your Portrait?
Begin with a complimentary, no-obligation consultation. Hazel would love to discuss your portrait ideas and provide a personalized quotation for clients in Florida.
Request a Free ConsultationFlorida Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Alachua, Baker, Bay, Bradford, Brevard, Broward, Calhoun, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, DeSoto, Dixie, Duval, Escambia, Flagler, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Glades, Gulf, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Holmes, Indian River, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lake, Lee, Leon, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Nassau, Okaloosa, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Santa Rosa, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Sumter, Suwannee, Taylor, Union, Volusia, Wakulla, Walton and Washington.
Towns in Florida Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Palm Beach, Manalapan, Gulf Stream, Ocean Ridge, Highland Beach, Jupiter Island, Jupiter, Admirals Cove, Wellington, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Vero Beach, John’s Island, Windsor, Stuart, Sewall’s Point, Fisher Island, Star Island, Indian Creek Village, Bal Harbour, Golden Beach, Sunny Isles Beach, Aventura, Key Biscayne, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Pinecrest, Miami Beach, Naples, Port Royal, Aqualane Shores, Old Naples, Pelican Bay, Marco Island, Bonita Springs, Sanibel, Captiva, Boca Grande, Longboat Key, Bird Key, Siesta Key, Casey Key, Lakewood Ranch, Sarasota, Anna Maria Island, Winter Park, Windermere, Isleworth, Lake Mary, Ponte Vedra Beach, Amelia Island, Fernandina Beach, Davis Islands, Hyde Park, Belleair, Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach and Seaside.
Who Came to Florida: Arrivals and the Painted Portrait
The history of portrait painting in Florida is inseparable from the story of who came to the state and why. Spanish colonists, plantation families, railroad magnates, winter visitors, exiles, retirees and a steady flow of new arrivals have each left a mark on what Florida painted and collected. The result is an artistic identity built less on a single regional school than on layers of arrival, wealth and reinvention.
Long before European contact, Florida was home to the Timucua, Apalachee, Calusa and Tequesta peoples, whose visual culture was sophisticated and distinct. The Calusa in particular produced remarkable carved and painted wooden objects, including ceremonial masks and animal figures preserved in the waterlogged muck at Key Marco and recovered in the 1890s. These works represent one of the most significant bodies of pre-Columbian art surviving from anywhere in North America.
European art arrived with Spanish settlement. St. Augustine, founded in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States, and its churches and missions were furnished with religious paintings, carvings and devotional images brought from Spain, Cuba and Mexico. Portraiture in the colonial period was largely confined to clergy, colonial officials and military men, and comparatively little of it survives.
Florida became a United States territory in 1821 and a state in 1845. In the plantation districts of the north, around Tallahassee and the Apalachicola basin, planters and officials commissioned painted likenesses in the manner of the wider American South. These were formal, often stiff, and intended to assert standing in a young and unsettled society.
The most consequential change came late in the nineteenth century, when northern painters discovered Florida’s light. Martin Johnson Heade settled in St. Augustine in 1883 and spent the rest of his life painting Florida’s marshes, rivers and magnolias, finding a patron in the railroad developer Henry Flagler. Winslow Homer worked in Homosassa and Key West, producing watercolours of extraordinary freshness. Their presence established Florida as a subject worth serious artistic attention rather than merely a winter refuge.
Flagler himself did more than any other individual to create a market for art in Florida. His Hotel Ponce de León in St. Augustine, opened in 1888, included studios intended for resident artists, and his own house at Whitehall in Palm Beach, completed in 1902, was furnished on a European scale. The wealthy families who followed his railway south expected the same, and society portraiture became part of the furniture of a Florida winter season.
The land boom of the 1920s accelerated everything. George Merrick’s Coral Gables and Addison Mizner’s Palm Beach produced Mediterranean Revival houses whose scale and formality invited painted portraits, murals and collections. Fortunes made elsewhere were displayed here, and a portrait above a Florida mantelpiece became a way of transplanting family history into a newly built setting.
Sarasota gained an institution of genuine international weight when John Ringling built his museum there, opening to the public in 1931. His collection of European Old Masters, strongest in Baroque painting and including major works by Rubens, brought the European portrait tradition to the Gulf coast and gave Florida artists something to measure themselves against without leaving the state.
Florida also produced one of the most distinctive artistic movements in the American South. From the 1950s, a group of African American painters working around Fort Pierce, later known as the Highwaymen, painted Florida landscapes at speed and sold them directly from the roadside, often because segregation closed conventional galleries to them. Artists such as Harold Newton and Alfred Hair created a body of work now seriously collected, and a reminder that Florida’s art history runs well outside its grand houses.
After the Second World War, Florida’s cultural institutions matured. The Norton Museum of Art opened in West Palm Beach in 1941, and Miami grew into a genuinely international art centre. The arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002 and the opening of the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2013 confirmed the state as a destination for collectors rather than simply a place they wintered.
Today Florida holds one of the densest concentrations of private wealth in the United States, and much of it is recent. Palm Beach, Jupiter Island, Naples, Fisher Island, Key Biscayne and the Gulf coast barrier islands have drawn finance, technology and family offices from the north-east, and with them a substantial community of collectors and patrons commissioning work for houses built or bought within the last generation.
Contemporary Florida portraiture spans traditional oil painting, photorealism, and work that borrows freely from the state’s Caribbean and Latin American connections. Yet the reason families commission a portrait has not changed. It marks a marriage, a child, a retirement, a generation. In a state where so much is new, recently built, or freshly arrived, a painted portrait supplies something Florida does not otherwise hand out easily: a considered, permanent record of a particular person, made by hand and meant to outlast them.