Alfred S. Waugh

Alfred S. Waugh was an itinerant sculptor known for making sculptural portraits, miniature paintings and portrait paintings. Waugh traveled throughout Europe and the United States, hoping to publish a record of his travel journals along with drawings of the American landscape. Although Waugh never completed his illustrated travel log, he did keep journals, lectured on art, and made portraits of influential people throughout the country.

In 1827, Waugh studied art at the Royal Dublin Society, now the National College of Art and Design, under the Irish sculptor and director of the RDS School of Modelling, Edward Smyth. As part of the curriculum, he studied modeling in clay and attended life classes. After his studies, Waugh traveled in Europe before immigrating to the United States.

Arriving in the U.S., Waugh worked for the sculptor Robert Ball Hughes (1804-1868) in New York in the early 1830s, before traveling to Baltimore, where he applied for citizenship in 1833. By 1835, Waugh was in Raleigh, North Carolina. He then traveled to several cities in the South: Atlanta, Georgia, in 1843, Pensacola, Florida, in 1843, and then Mobile, Alabama, in 1844. In Mobile, he met artist John B. Tisdale, who became his artistic partner and traveled with Waugh to Missouri in 1845. 

Waugh first worked in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he met with explorer John C. Frémont in 1845 and asked about joining Frémont’s Third Expedition as an artist. Frémont declined to take him on the expedition. In 1845, Waugh traveled to Independence, then to Lexington, Missouri, back to Independence, and then to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Waugh kept a journal of his travel in 1845-1846, Travels in Search of the Elephant: The Wanderings of Alfred S. Waugh, Artist, in Louisiana, Missouri, and Santa Fe, in 1845-1846. An edited version was published in 1951. After these travels, Waugh returned to Missouri to establish a studio in Boonville, where he made miniature paintings and gave public lectures about art. 

From 1848-1855, Waugh is listed in the St. Louis Directory, where he made portrait sculptures and paintings, and wrote and lectured about art. In St. Louis, Waugh met the artist William J. Brickey and wrote articles that were published in the Western Journal in 1848 and 1849.  He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.