He was the first vice president of the
National Academy of Design, He excelled in portrait painting, but was less careful in
genre pictures. Among his landscapes are
Rydal Falls, England,
October Afternoon, and
Ruins of Brambletye. His genre subjects include
Rip Van Winkle,
The News Boy, and
Boyhood of Washington. His portraits include those of
Henry Rutgers and
Fitz-Greene Halleck in the
New York Historical Society. He also painted portraits of
Angelica Singleton Van Buren,
Bishop White,
Chief Justices
Marshall and
Nelson,
Jacob Barker,
William Wirt,
Audubon,
DeWitt Clinton,
Richard Varick,
Martin Van Buren,
Francis L. Hawks, and
William H. Seward. File:Henry Inman - William H. Seward.jpg|William Henry Seward around 1844 File:Henry Inman - Frances Adeline Miller Seward.jpg|Seward's wife
Frances Adeline Seward Thomas L. McKenney assigned Inman, who was an accomplished lithographer, the task of copying more than a hundred oil paintings of Native American leaders by
Charles Bird King to translate into a printed book, the
History of the Indian Tribes of North America. The oil paintings are now in the collections of
White House, the
Joslyn Art Museum,
Harvard Art Museums, and the
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, among others. the last of which considered his most famous. Critic
John Neal in
The Yankee called it "a remarkably fine picture, notwithstanding its faults... a bold, impassioned, well-painted picture". At the time of his death, he was engaged on a series of historical pictures for the
Capitol at
Washington. He was also president of
National Academy of Design. Among his pupils was the portraitist and still-life painter
Thomas Wightman. ==Personal life==