William Sidney Mount was born in East Setauket, Long Island on November 26, 1807. He was an anomaly of sorts, reaching great success while deviating from normal academic routines and popular painting trends at the time. He is among the foremost American genre painters of the 19th century, painting the beauty of Long Island, NY and its inhabitant’s daily lives.

Mount spent most of his life on his family’s ninety acre farm in Stony Brook, Long Island, making occasional trips into New York City. In 1825, at the age of eighteen, Mount ventured into the city to apprentice with his brother at his sign painting shop. The following year, he enrolled at the recently established National Academy of Design, where he studied history painting, however he had to leave after only a year due to illness. Upon his return to Stony Brook, he painted his first genre scene, Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride of 1830, and it was shown that year at the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition. Two years later, when Mount became a member of the N.A.D., the president, Samuel F.B. Morse, sang Mount’s praises as a pioneer of American art. Mount’s career really took off in the 1830s.  He gained the patronship of Luman Reed, who even offered to send Mount abroad to study. The painter declined for fear that he would fall in love with Europe and its art, and in the process losing the American spirit that had begun to make prints of his works so popular abroad. Eventually Mount partnered with French art dealing firm, Goupil, Vibert & Company, who would help him decide what to paint based on their direction for what would look best in print. This is how his “musician” series came to be. Mount himself was a violinist, who even designed his own violin, which he called “the cradle of harmony.” His passion for music is something that can be seen in many of his genre scenes. This particular series contains two of his most famous works, The Banjo Player, 1856 and The Bone Player,1856. Their success is peculiar due to the fact that they are portraits, and the sitters are both African American men. Mount portrayed all of his sitters and subjects honestly and with dignity, excluding popular stereotypes, which made them unique for their time. Mount died on November 19, 1868 on Long Island. His legacy today is that of being America’s foremost genre painter of the 19th century, and for portraying the beauty of rural America and its residents with honesty and dignity.