This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| A portrait and animal painter, Theodore Moise was born in Charleston, South Carolina and settled in New Orleans where he worked from 1841 to 1884. The Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists refers to him as "One of the finest portrait and horse painters active in the South during Reconstruction" (267) and also credits him as one of the first southern artists to do horse portraits.
Moise was a member of the Southern Art Union and exhibited his work at the St. Charles Hotel. A painting for which he is remembered is "Life on the Metairie", an historical depiction that he did with Victor Pierson, and which won Grand State-Fair first prize in 1868 for best historical painting.
In 1835, he first opened a studio, which was in Charleston, and he promoted himself as a portraitist, restorer and ornamental penman. During the day he worked in a cotton factor's office and did oil portraits for diversion. The next year, he moved to Woodville, Mississippi, and by 1841, was in New Orleans where he did portraits and worked with a several studio mates including Trevor Thomas Fowler, Benjamin Franklin Reinhart, and Paul Poincy. He also traveled and painted in surrounding states including Louisville and Frankfort, Kentucky where he, along with Trevor Fowler, did portraits of both people and horses. He spent one year in New York.
During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army, becoming a Major, and then after the war, returned to New Orleans where he continued portrait painting. His subjects included Henry Clay (1843) and Andrew Jackson (1844).
Moise died in Natchitoches, Louisiana in 1885. A son, James Campbell Moise, became a portrait artist, although he was primarily a lawyer.
Sources include:
Patricia Brady Schmit, Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists
Peter Hastings Falk (Editor), Who Was Who in American Art
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