An Itinerant Life in Portraiture James Bowman was an American itinerant artist and portrait painter born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. After traveling to Chillicothe, Ohio, to learn carpentry, he met the painter J. T. Turner, who taught him the rudiments of portrait painting. His professional career saw him painting in Pittsburgh and other communities during the early 1820s. He also worked in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he painted p…