( fl 1795; d nr St Louis, MO, 13 July 1820). American painter. He was a minor yet versatile artist whose career began in Philadelphia, PA, in the 1790s. The son of a Quaker schoolmaster, Paul received his early training from Charles Willson Peale and in 1795 participated in the founding of the Columbianum, Peale’s ill-fated attempt to establish an art academy in America. Dunlap records that Paul’s earliest works were based on engravings after pictures by Benjamin West. (He exhibited a copy (untraced) of West’s Death of Caesar (untraced) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in 1813.) He later turned to portraiture and in 1796, with several other Philadelphia artists, formed the firm of Pratt, Ritter & Co., whose aim was ‘to undertake all manner of commissions, from the painting of portraits, signs and fire buckets to japanning and the execution of coffin plates’. At this time Paul is also known to have engaged in small tasks for Gilbert Stuart, including the painting of lettering in some of the latter’s portraits.