Commissioning a Portrait in Pennsylvania
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Pennsylvania. 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 Pennsylvania. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Pennsylvania Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Pennsylvania, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Pennsylvania and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
Portrait Services in Pennsylvania Communities
How to Commission a Portrait from Pennsylvania
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Pennsylvania. 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 Pennsylvania, 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 Pennsylvania typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania
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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania. 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 Pennsylvania
Hazel admires Pennsylvania deeply, and that admiration has only grown stronger with every commission she completes for clients across the state. There is something genuinely grounding about the people here - a steadiness and sincerity that she finds rare and deeply moving. From the rowhouse neighbourhoods of South Philadelphia to the rolling farmland of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania carries a sense of lived history that feels woven into the faces of the people she paints. For a portrait artist, that kind of depth is everything. Character is what makes a portrait breathe, and Pennsylvanians, in Hazel's experience, have it in abundance.
Hazel loves the way Pennsylvania wears its cultural richness so naturally, without fanfare. She has spent time wandering through the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, one of the oldest art schools and museums in the country, and she finds it genuinely stirring to work in a state with such a serious and long-standing relationship with the visual arts. That legacy feels present in her clients too - many of them approach a commissioned portrait with real thoughtfulness, understanding that they are participating in something lasting. That kind of intentionality makes her work better, and she is grateful for it every time.
Hazel also admires the quiet dignity of places like Gettysburg, where the weight of American history settles over the landscape in a way that is impossible to ignore. There is a contemplative quality to that part of the state that she finds deeply inspiring - a reminder that faces and stories matter, that preserving them is worthwhile. It brings a certain seriousness to her brushwork that she carries into every portrait, whether she is painting a grandmother in Pittsburgh or a young family in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Hazel also loves the warmth that Pennsylvania clients bring to the entire portrait process. They tend to be honest, unpretentious, and genuinely curious about the work. They ask good questions and trust her instincts. The Philadelphia Museum of Art stands as a symbol of everything Hazel appreciates about the state - a place that takes beauty seriously while remaining open and welcoming to everyone. That combination of warmth and depth is exactly what she hopes her portraits reflect, and Pennsylvania never fails to remind her why she became a painter in the first place.
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 Pennsylvania.
Request a Free ConsultationPennsylvania Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Adams, Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Berks, Blair, Bradford, Bucks, Butler, Cambria, Cameron, Carbon, Centre, Chester, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Crawford, Cumberland, Dauphin, Delaware, Elk, Erie, Fayette, Forest, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniata, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lawrence, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Lycoming, McKean, Mercer, Mifflin, Monroe, Montgomery, Montour, Northampton, Northumberland, Perry, Philadelphia, Pike, Potter, Schuylkill, Snyder, Somerset, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Union, Venango, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Westmoreland, Wyoming and York.
Towns in Pennsylvania Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill, Society Hill, Rittenhouse Square, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Villanova, Radnor, Wayne, Devon, Berwyn, Malvern, Gladwyne, Merion Station, Narberth, Ardmore, Newtown Square, Media, Swarthmore, Chadds Ford, Kennett Square, West Chester, Doylestown, New Hope, Newtown, Yardley, Ambler, Blue Bell, Lower Gwynedd, Chalfont, Bethlehem, Allentown, Easton, Reading, Wyomissing, Lancaster, Lititz, Hershey, Harrisburg, Camp Hill, Carlisle, State College, Williamsport, Scranton, Clarks Summit, Pittsburgh, Sewickley, Fox Chapel, Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Ligonier and Erie.
Philadelphia and the Birth of American Portraiture
American portrait painting begins, in any serious sense, in Philadelphia. No other state has a stronger claim on the origins of the tradition, and none has kept the practice going with more institutional seriousness over two and a half centuries.
The land was Lenape homeland, and William Penn’s colony of 1681 was founded on terms unusually favourable to the people already living there. Penn’s “holy experiment” attracted Quakers, German Pietists, Scots-Irish and Welsh settlers, and by the middle of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was the largest and richest city in British North America - a place with money, printers, scientists and a hunger to be taken seriously.
Benjamin West, born in Springfield Township in 1738, went to Italy and then to London, became history painter to George III and the second president of the Royal Academy, and trained an entire generation of American painters in his studio. Almost every significant American portraitist of the period passed through it.
Charles Willson Peale was one of them. He settled in Philadelphia, painted Washington from life more often than anyone else, founded a museum, and raised a family of painters named after old masters - Rembrandt, Raphaelle, Titian. Gilbert Stuart worked here too, painting the Athenaeum portrait of Washington that ended up on the dollar bill. Thomas Sully arrived in 1808 and painted well over two thousand portraits before he was finished.
In 1805 Peale and others founded the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art museum and art school in the United States. It has been teaching painters continuously ever since, and its collection of American portraiture is among the finest anywhere.
Its greatest product was Thomas Eakins, born in Philadelphia in 1844, who studied in Paris under Gérôme and came home to paint the least flattering and most truthful portraits in American art. Eakins would not idealise a sitter, which cost him commissions and eventually his teaching post, and it is exactly why his portraits still look alive. The Gross Clinic, painted in 1875, remains in Philadelphia.
Then Mary Cassatt, born in Allegheny City near Pittsburgh in 1844, who went to Paris, exhibited with the Impressionists and made the study of mothers and children into serious painting. And Cecilia Beaux, Philadelphia-born and PAFA-trained, who became one of the most sought-after society portraitists in America and the first woman to hold a full-time teaching post at the Academy.
West of the Alleghenies, steel and coal and rail built a second set of fortunes. Frick, Carnegie, Mellon, Heinz and Westinghouse endowed Pittsburgh with the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Frick, and their families sat for the best painters of the day - Sargent among them. The Brandywine valley in Chester and Delaware counties produced the Wyeths and a distinct regional school of its own.
The institutions that came out of all this are formidable: the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, the Carnegie, the Frick Pittsburgh, the Brandywine Museum, the Woodmere. Pennsylvania takes pictures seriously in a way that shapes what people expect from a commissioned portrait.
Commissions come from across the state. The Main Line - Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Villanova, Gladwyne, Radnor - and Chestnut Hill and Society Hill in the city itself. Bucks and Chester counties, where old farmhouses have become family seats. Lancaster and the Lehigh Valley. Pittsburgh’s Sewickley and Fox Chapel. Each has its own tone and all of them still commission.
Institutional portraiture is unusually strong here. Penn, Princeton’s neighbours, Lehigh, Bucknell, Villanova, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Carnegie Mellon, the medical schools, the Union League, the courts and the old Philadelphia law firms all keep portrait collections and continue to add to them.
A Pennsylvania sitter tends to arrive with a view already formed, which is a good thing. This is a place where people have grown up near real paintings, and where a portrait is understood as a made object with a maker - not a decoration. Eakins would have approved.