Commissioning a Portrait in Rhode Island
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Rhode Island. 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 Rhode Island. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Rhode Island Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Rhode Island, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Rhode Island and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
How to Commission a Portrait from Rhode Island
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Rhode Island. 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 Rhode Island, 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 Rhode Island typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island
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 Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island. 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 Rhode Island
Hazel Morgan has developed a deep and genuine affection for creating portraits for clients across Rhode Island, a state whose layered history and vibrant creative energy feel almost custom-made for an artist of her sensibilities. Providence alone offers an extraordinary wealth of inspiration - from the stunning Beaux-Arts architecture surrounding Benefit Street's "Mile of History" to the eclectic energy of the Federal Hill neighborhood, where the aroma of fresh pasta drifts past Italian bakeries and local families gather for Sunday meals that have anchored community life for generations. Hazel admires visiting the RISD Museum on Benefit Street, where world-class collections remind her of portraiture's profound lineage, and she often walks along the riverwalk near Waterplace Park, watching the gondolas drift past during WaterFire Providence, that remarkable community tradition of bonfires blazing on the water while music fills the evening air. These moments of collective beauty consistently sharpen her eye for the human emotion she strives to capture in every commissioned piece.
Beyond Providence, Rhode Island's coastal and rural character gives Hazel an equally rich source of connection with the people she paints. Newport's storied Cliff Walk, winding dramatically between the famous Gilded Age mansions and the churning Atlantic, speaks to the kind of resilience and grandeur she sees in many of her subjects. She has spent Saturday mornings browsing the vibrant Hope Street Farmers Market in Providence, chatting with locals who carry the genuine warmth of a tight-knit community, and those conversations inevitably inform the personality and authenticity she works to bring into each portrait. The Blackstone River Valley, stretching through the heart of the state and recognized as the birthplace of America's Industrial Revolution, reminds her that Rhode Islanders have always been makers and innovators - a spirit she finds wonderfully alive in her clients.
What Hazel treasures most about serving Rhode Island portrait clients is the sense that this small but remarkably distinctive state never takes its identity for granted. Whether she is working with a family from Narragansett overlooking the salt ponds, or capturing a professional in downtown Providence steps from the ornate Providence Arcade - America's oldest indoor shopping mall - she finds that Rhode Islanders bring a proud, specific sense of place to every sitting, making her portraits feel genuinely rooted and alive.
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 Rhode Island.
Request a Free ConsultationRhode Island Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence and Washington.
Towns in Rhode Island Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Newport, Ocean Drive, Bellevue Avenue, Middletown, Portsmouth, Jamestown, Little Compton, Tiverton, Watch Hill, Weekapaug, Quonochontaug, Charlestown, Narragansett, Point Judith, Saunderstown, Wickford, North Kingstown, East Greenwich, Barrington, Rumstick Point, Bristol, Warren, Providence East Side, College Hill, Blackstone Boulevard, Wayland Square, Edgewood, Cranston, Lincoln, Smithfield, Greenville, Foster, Scituate, Exeter, South Kingstown, Wakefield, Matunuck, Block Island, New Shoreham, Pawtucket, Cumberland, Woonsocket, Warwick, Apponaug, Coventry, West Greenwich, Hopkinton, Westerly, Ashaway and Pascoag.
Gilbert Stuart and the Rhode Island Portrait
Rhode Island is the smallest state in the union and it produced the most widely reproduced portrait painter in American history. Gilbert Stuart was born in a snuff mill at Saunderstown in 1755, and the face he painted of George Washington has been in the pocket of every American since. For a state of this size, that is an unusual claim to have on the history of the painted likeness.
The region is the homeland of the Narragansett, whose stone-carved and woven traditions long preceded European settlement. Roger Williams founded Providence in 1636 on the principle of religious liberty, which drew dissenters, Quakers and Sephardic Jews — Newport’s Touro Synagogue, completed in 1763, is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States. A colony founded on tolerance attracted people with reasons to be somewhere else, and that mix shaped its culture.
Newport grew rich early on maritime trade, and with wealth came portraits. Robert Feke worked in the town in the 1740s, producing likenesses of merchant families that stand comparison with anything painted in Boston at the time. Colonial Newport was, briefly, one of the most sophisticated small cities in the Americas.
Then came Stuart. He trained in London under Benjamin West, made his reputation there, and returned to America in 1793 with the specific intention of painting Washington. He succeeded three times over, and the unfinished Athenaeum head became the model for the dollar bill. His technique — building the face in transparent layers so the flesh appears lit from within — is still taught.
The Gilded Age turned Newport into something without American precedent. From the 1880s the Vanderbilts, Astors and Berwinds built summer houses of a scale meant to rival European palaces — The Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff — and filled them accordingly. Society portraiture was part of the equipment of that world, and the great international portraitists all painted Newport summers.
John La Farge worked in Newport and changed American decorative art, particularly stained glass, where his opalescent technique was genuinely innovative. Newport in this period was not merely a resort; it was a place where serious artists worked.
Providence built the institutions. The Rhode Island School of Design was founded in 1877, funded in part by money left over from the state’s contribution to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and its museum has grown into one of the finest college art collections in America. RISD has since made Providence a genuine centre for art education, and its presence is why the state punches so far above its size.
The Newport Art Museum followed in 1912, housed in a Richard Morris Hunt stick-style villa, and continues to show the work of artists connected with the region.
The commissioning market today divides along the same lines it always has. Newport and the coastal communities — Ocean Drive, Jamestown, Little Compton — hold summer families, many of several generations’ standing. Watch Hill and Weekapaug in the far south-west hold a quieter and equally established set. The East Side of Providence, around College Hill and Blackstone Boulevard, holds academic, medical and professional families.
Rhode Island also sustains a steady institutional tradition. Brown University, RISD, the state’s hospitals, yacht clubs and long-established firms all maintain portrait collections, and the convention of marking a commodore, a chairman or a retiring physician with a painting persists here more strongly than the state’s size would suggest.
What is distinctive about a Rhode Island commission is the relationship between the painting and the house. Many of these are summer houses that have held the same family for a century, where the walls already carry earlier generations. A new portrait joins a conversation rather than starting one.
It is a small state that has taken pictures of people seriously for a very long time — from Feke’s Newport merchants to Stuart’s presidents to the families who still commission today. Being born in Rhode Island did not stop Gilbert Stuart defining how a nation pictured itself, and the state has never quite forgotten it.