Commissioning a Portrait in Tennessee
Hazel Morgan provides a bespoke portrait painting service to clients throughout Tennessee. 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 Tennessee. Each commission begins with a personal consultation and results in a work of enduring artistic merit.
Portrait Artist Tennessee Area
As your trusted Portrait Artist Tennessee, Hazel Morgan serves portrait clients in Tennessee and the surrounding communities. Portraits are shipped directly to your door with professional packaging and full insurance coverage.
Portrait Services in Tennessee Communities
How to Commission a Portrait from Tennessee
Commissioning a portrait from Hazel Morgan is a collaborative and enjoyable experience, regardless of where you are located in Tennessee. 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 Tennessee, 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 Tennessee typically receive their portrait within one to two weeks of completion.
Why Clients in Tennessee 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 Tennessee
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 Tennessee 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 Tennessee. 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 Tennessee
Hazel admires Tennessee with a depth of feeling that goes well beyond admiration for a beautiful state. There is something in the landscape and the light here - the way the sun falls across the rolling hills of the Cumberland Plateau, or the warm amber glow that settles over Nashville at dusk - that feeds directly into her work as a portrait painter. Light is everything to Hazel. It is what gives a portrait its soul, and Tennessee seems to offer it in abundance, shifting and generous through every season. She has found that painting clients here puts her in a particular frame of mind, one that is open, unhurried, and deeply attentive to the person in front of her.
Hazel loves the people of Tennessee most of all, and she is quick to say so. There is a warmth and an unpretentious honesty in the clients she has met here that translates beautifully onto canvas. Faces with stories, hands that have worked, eyes that hold both laughter and something quieter underneath - these are the kinds of subjects that inspire her finest portraits. She has been moved by the rich cultural heritage woven into everyday life, from the legendary spirit of The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to the vibrant creative community that has grown up around it. Walking through neighbourhoods like East Nashville, she finds herself sketching details in her mind - the textures, the expressions, the easy conversations happening on front porches.
Hazel also admires the way Tennessee honours its own history without losing sight of the present. The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis is a place she speaks about with genuine reverence, noting that it deepened her understanding of portraiture as a form of witness and remembrance. Great portraits, she believes, are never just likenesses - they are acts of dignity. Tennessee, with its layered and sometimes complicated story, reminds her of that responsibility every time she picks up a brush.
Hazel also loves returning to Tennessee because it genuinely feels like coming back to friends. Her clients here tend to be relaxed, trusting, and enthusiastically engaged in the portrait process, which makes for a collaborative experience she treasures. That ease and openness, she says, always finds its way into the finished painting in ways that are difficult to describe but impossible to miss.
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 Tennessee.
Request a Free ConsultationTennessee Counties Hazel Paints Portraits In
Anderson, Bedford, Benton, Bledsoe, Blount, Bradley, Campbell, Cannon, Carroll, Carter, Cheatham, Chester, Claiborne, Clay, Cocke, Coffee, Crockett, Cumberland, Davidson, Decatur, DeKalb, Dickson, Dyer, Fayette, Fentress, Franklin, Gibson, Giles, Grainger, Greene, Grundy, Hamblen, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardeman, Hardin, Hawkins, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Knox, Lake, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Loudon, Macon, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Maury, McMinn, McNairy, Meigs, Monroe, Montgomery, Moore, Morgan, Obion, Overton, Perry, Pickett, Polk, Putnam, Rhea, Roane, Robertson, Rutherford, Scott, Sequatchie, Sevier, Shelby, Smith, Stewart, Sullivan, Sumner, Tipton, Trousdale, Unicoi, Union, Van Buren, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Weakley, White, Williamson and Wilson.
Towns in Tennessee Where Hazel’s Portrait Clients Live
Nashville, Belle Meade, Green Hills, Forest Hills, Oak Hill, Hillsboro Village, Germantown Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, Leiper’s Fork, Nolensville, Thompson’s Station, College Grove, Arrington, Gallatin, Hendersonville, Murfreesboro, Columbia, Spring Hill, Clarksville, Memphis, Central Gardens, Chickasaw Gardens, East Memphis, Germantown, Collierville, Arlington, Eads, Knoxville, Sequoyah Hills, Farragut, Maryville, Oak Ridge, Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain, Riverview, Cleveland, Sewanee, Monteagle, Winchester, Cookeville, Crossville, Jackson, Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol, Greeneville, Gatlinburg, Townsend and Walland.
Ralph E. W. Earl, Belle Meade and the Tennessee Portrait
Tennessee has one portrait story that is genuinely unlike any other state’s. A painter married into Andrew Jackson’s family, moved into the White House with him, and spent a decade producing his likeness for a nation that could not get enough of it. Ralph E. W. Earl was, in effect, the first American presidential image-maker.
The land was Cherokee, Chickasaw, Yuchi and Shawnee homeland, and the removals of the 1830s emptied much of the east - the Trail of Tears began here. Settlement came over the mountains from Virginia and the Carolinas along the Wilderness Road, and Tennessee became a state in 1796. It is really three states: the mountain east, the middle basin around Nashville, and the cotton delta west of the Tennessee River.
Earl came to Nashville in 1817, married Rachel Jackson’s niece, and after her death became Jackson’s constant companion. He painted him repeatedly - in uniform, in a cloak, at the Hermitage - and those images did more than anything to fix Old Hickory in the public mind. Earl died at the Hermitage in 1838 and is buried in the garden there, near the Jacksons.
The Hermitage itself, east of Nashville, has been open to the public since 1889 and keeps its original furnishings and its picture hang. It is one of the best-preserved early presidential houses in America and worth seeing for the way portraits are placed in it.
Nashville then did something extraordinary. For the 1897 Centennial it built a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, kept it, and rebuilt it permanently in concrete in the 1920s. It now houses the Cowan Collection of American painting and calls the city the Athens of the South without apparent embarrassment.
Cheekwood is the other Nashville institution - a 1930s Georgian house and gardens built on a Maxwell House coffee fortune, given to the city in 1960 and now a museum with a serious American collection. The Frist Art Museum, in a magnificent 1934 art deco post office, opened in 2001 and shows major loan exhibitions.
Memphis has its own. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, opened in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state. The Dixon Gallery and Gardens holds French and American Impressionists in a house set in seventeen acres. Hunt-Phelan and the Victorian Village houses preserve the city’s cotton-money interiors.
Belle Meade explains a great deal about Tennessee taste. From the 1820s it was one of the foremost Thoroughbred nurseries in the world, and its stallion Leamington sired Iroquois, who in 1881 became the first American-bred horse to win the Epsom Derby - news that reportedly stopped trading on the Nashville exchange. Equine portraiture has been taken seriously in Middle Tennessee ever since, and the Iroquois Steeplechase has been run at Percy Warner Park since 1941.
The Tennessee Walking Horse is the other half of that. Bred largely in Bedford and Marshall counties around Shelbyville, it is the state’s own breed, and a good walking horse is painted with the same care a Thoroughbred gets.
Commissions come from well-defined places. Nashville’s Belle Meade, Green Hills, Forest Hills and Oak Hill, and out through Brentwood to Franklin, Leiper’s Fork and the Williamson County farms. Memphis’s Central Gardens, Chickasaw Gardens, East Memphis, Germantown and Collierville. Knoxville’s Sequoyah Hills. Chattanooga’s Lookout Mountain and Riverview. Sewanee and Monteagle on the Cumberland Plateau. And the Tri-Cities in the far north-east.
Institutional portraiture is unusually active here. Vanderbilt, the University of Tennessee, Sewanee - the University of the South, whose Gothic campus and academic gowns make for good pictures - Rhodes College, Belmont, Lipscomb, Fisk, whose Stieglitz Collection given by Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the great gifts in American museum history, the medical centres, the state capitol and the older Nashville and Memphis firms.
A Tennessee sitter is often musical, or connected to horses, or both, and the state has an easy confidence about being painted that comes from a long habit of it. Earl painted Jackson because Jackson understood that a likeness was a public act. Two centuries on, Tennessee still rather agrees.