Hamsted was a sea captain who lived to the age of ninety-two years. He is pictured in this watercolor in a painted Hitchcock-type chair overlooking the sea and pointing to a three-masted schooner on the horizon.

Karl Compton, the older brother of Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, was also a physicist. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1912, and from 1919 to 1930 taught at that institution. He served for eighteen years as president of M.I.T., and from 1949 to 1954 was chairman of the corporation of M.I.T. This portrait is part of Kaufman's series, executed in the early and middle 1940s, of notable American men and women.

Compton, a native of Wooster, Ohio, received his Ph.D. was Princeton in 1916 and later became professor of physics at Washington University (1920-23) and at the University of Chicago (1923-45). He received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927 for his work with X-rays. In the early and middle 1940s the artist, Enit Kaufman, made many portrait studies such as this one in a series intended to capture the likenesses of the notable men and women who had made significant contributions to the nation.

The English actor Edmund Kean is represented in this portrait as Othello, one of his most famous roles.

A native of Connecticut, Halleck came to New York in 1811 and became associated with a group of literary men, with one of whom, Joseph Rodman Drake, he wrote in 1819 a series of articles for the New York "Evening Post." His fame was established that year with the publication of "Fanny," a satire on the follies of society. Halleck was later employed as confidential secretary to John Jacob Astor; when Astor died in 1848 he left Halleck an annuity, allowing him to resume his career as an author.

George Clinton, seven times governor of New York (1777-95 and 1801-04) and twice vice-president of the United States (1805-12), was a leading political figure from the period of the Revolution to the War of 1812. This watercolor is generally similar to Ames's 1814 oil of Clinton, and actually appears to be signed. However, this signature is suspect; moreover, the style of the painting is not like anything known to be by Ames.