George Hewitt Cushman

George Hewitt Cushman (June 5, 1814 – August 3, 1876) was a top American engraver and painter of miniature paintings and portraits of his time (second only to Edward Greene Malbone). He turned early to these professions after family financial misfortunes prevented him from entering West Point and becoming a soldier.

He studied drawing under Washington Allston and line engraving with Asaph Willard and Seth and John Cheney (with whom he later shared a studio in Boston).

In 1843 he moved to Philadelphia and resided there for twenty years, appearing in the city's directory as a miniature painting and portrait painter. In 1849 he married Susan Wetherill. While in Philadelphia he engraved printing plates for many books, including James Fenimore Cooper's novels' thirty-four volumes (1859–1861), the household edition of Charles Dickens (1861), and Frances S. Osgood's Poems (1850), and portraits including Young America in the Alps, Forrest in William Rounseville Alger's Life of Edwin Forrest (1877), and a portrait of Lord Byron entitled inter alia. in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.