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David Dearinger focuses on a small group of painted and sculpted portraits from the Athenaeum's collection, including Washington Allston's (1814) and Charles Robert Leslie's (1818) copies of Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the great history painter Benjamin West, Chester Harding's portrait of politician and patriot Daniel Webster (ca. 1828 and 1849-51), Horatio Greenough's bust of legendary Boston beauty Emily Marshall Otis (1837-43), and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' marble relief of Massachusetts governor Roger Wolcott (1901-03). Dearinger reveals that, besides being artistic masterworks, each of these images has a fascinating back story related to its subject, creator, or provenance.

David B. Dearinger, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of paintings and Sculpture and head of the art department at the Boston Athenaeum, holds a PhD in art history and is a specialist in 19th-century American painting and sculpture. He has published and lectured widely in the field and has curated many exhibitions in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. Among these have been exhibitions at the Athenaeum, including "Seen But not Heard: Images of Children from the Collection of the Boston Athenaeum" (2004), "Power Line: The Art of Leo Dee" (2005), "George and Martha Washington: Gilbert Stuart's Athenaeum Portraits" (2006), "Acquired Tastes: Two Hundred Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenaeum" (2007, with Stanley Ellis Cushing), and "Albert Wein, American Modernist" (2008). He has received fellowships from the Henry Luce Foundation, the City University of New York (where he was a university Fellow), and the Lucelia Foundation. In 2002, he was the Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished visiting Scholar at Rollins College, Winter park, Florida.