s New Orleans began to prosper during the Spanish period, so did its merchants, local authorities, and outstanding citizens who wanted to be remembered and to embellish their homes and institutions with their own likeness. There was no art school in New Orleans until the end of the 19th century, however, the city did not lack the presence of painters and artists who had emigrated there, attracted by the activity of the bustling city.

Unfortunately, two fires at the end of the 18th century destroyed many of the paintings from that period and before it. One of the first active painters working in the city prior to 1800 was José Francisco de Salazar y Mendoza, who seems to have worked with the assistance of his son or daughter, or perhaps his brother. Many of his canvases are not signed, a practice not unusual in Spanish America. Salazar was born in Mérida, Yucatán, and in 1782 arrived in New Orleans, where he died in 1802.

He painted portraits of Don Andrés Almonester y Roxas, Bishop Luis de Penalver y Cárdenas, and Doña Clara de la Motte. German-born painter Franz Joseph Fleischbein came to New Orleans in 1833. He developed a career as a portrait painter and later as a daguerreotypist and ambrotypist.

His Portrait of a Woman of Color has puzzled historians, who believe the portrait subject was one of Fleischbein's servants. Adolf D. Rinck, a French-born artist active around 1870, came to Louisiana in about 1840. He painted the 1853 portrait of Judah Philip Benjamin, who had become the most important lawyer in Louisiana around the time of Rinck's arrival. As a member of the House of Representatives, Benjamin informed the Senate of the secession of Louisiana, and later became the Secretary of War.