The Painter's Triumph, created by William Sidney Mount in 1838, has long been interpreted as an icon of the democratization of American art (Figure 1). Nearly every scholarly analysis of the painting frames it in the context of Mount's well-known charge to himself, “Paint pictures that will take with the public, in other words, never paint for the few, but for the many.” The farmer's enthusiastic involvement in the artist's work is viewed as emblematic of Mount's commitment to promoting the visual arts among ordinary folk. The painter's “triumph,” most assert, is his ability to reach the common man. This is certainly an appealing message and consistent with the desire to see mid-19th-century American artists as resolute democrats in tune with Jacksonian cultural reforms. Yet, Mount never called it The Painter's Triumph, referring to it only as “artist showing his work,” and there is no evidence that viewers in the late 1830s and early 1840s recognized a particularly democratic message. The current title first appeared in a catalogue in 1847, long after Mount sold the painting and two years after the death of Edward L. Carey, the man who commissioned it. Despite the 1847 title change, in his later autobiographical sketch Mount referred to the painting as “Artist showing his own work.”