He became the first vice-president of the National Academy of Design, and most of his short life was spent in New York City.

For seven years, he was apprenticed to portraitist John Wesley Jarvis, and they worked in tandem with Jarvis painting the likeness and Inman finishing the canvas. On a visit to New Orleans in 1820 and 1821, they made $6000.00 from completing six portraits.

In the mid to late 1820s, Inman established his own studio in New York City, and from 1826 to 1828, worked in partnership with his pupil Thomas Cummings. He received commissions to paint prominent New Yorkers including the De Kays and Drake families.

In 1831, Inman moved briefly from New York to Philadelphia where he was a partner in a lithography firm. He met Thomas L McKenney, a newspaper editor who was compiling a history of North American Indian tribes. He hired Inman to make careful copies of Indian portraits, most of them originally by Charles Bird King. By late 1833, Inman had completed more than 75 copies, remarkably true to King's originals. It was fortunate that this second set of portraits was produced because the original Indian Gallery of McKenney burned in a Smithsonian fire in 1865.

In the 1840s, Inman had failing health, and his last major commission was in 1844, when he traveled to England to paint Wordsworth and Macaulay. He died in 1846, shortly after his return from England, and shortly after an exhibition was held in New York to raise money for his impoverished family.

Source:
"Who Was Who in American Art" by Peter Falk

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