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Copyright by Rowena Houghton Dasch 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Rowena Houghton Dasch Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “Now Exhibiting:” Charles Bird King’s Picture Gallery, Fashioning American Taste and Nation 1824-1861 Committee: Susan Rather, Supervisor Michael Charlesworth Neil Kamil Emily Ballew Neff Jeffrey Smith “Now Exhibiting:” Charles Bird King’s Picture Gallery, Fashioning American Taste and Nation 1824-1861 by Rowena Houghton Dasch, AB, MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2012 Dedication For my family, each member of which has carried me through a portion of this journey. Dorothy Knox and Tom Houghton Kevin, Caroline, and Litty Dasch Acknowledgements When one embarks on a journey destined to take up a third of her lifetime, it becomes impossible adequately to acknowledge all who have joined in on the adventure. My first and greatest acknowledgment must be to my parents, Tom and Dorothy Knox Houghton. Their commitment to education and to the arts underpins all that I have accomplished academically in my own life. My mother has supported me at each step of the way, to the point of decamping for a summer to Alexandria, Virginia to provide childcare while I was in residence at the National Portrait Gallery. My father was taken from us too soon. He saw me finish my MA, and the strength of his conviction that I would finish my Ph.D. saw me through many months when I was not so sure that the day would ever come. My husband Kevin has stood by me as a cheerleader and as support, and has never blinked when I have announced (sometimes suddenly) that I need to travel. My sister Adele has lent a ready ear and rounded out my support team. And finally, our two daughters Caroline and Litty have helped me to keep it all in perspective. Girls, you were not supposed to be this big, but I hope witnessing the process will give you the confidence to produce your own great works someday. I never could have written this dissertation without the constant support and aid of my advisor, Susan Rather. In all that is good, her mark is on every page. Where I may have fallen short, the errors are mine. I have told her time and again that I am thankful v she reads with a pencil and not a red pen. Everything I have written would have come back to me a bloody mess. However, that is only the case because she is the consummate editor. I also thank her for giving me the space to allow the big ideas to emerge, as well as for being a sounding board every time I hit a wall. It was her interest in Benjamin West that first sent me looking at West’s students. I remain stunned that more has not been written about many of the young men who traveled to London, particularly those who studied there after 1800. The rest of my dissertation committee has lifted my argument. They helped me to shape my comprehensive exams in a manner that would draw out issues that became crucial – the influence of Dutch art and of Sir Joshua Reynolds, most importantly – and will see that their suggestions have helped to mold the final product. So, thank you to Jeffrey Smith, Michael Charlesworth, Neil Kamil, and Emily Neff. During the course of my research, I had the honor to spend time working at the National Portrait Gallery on a Smithsonian Institution Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Thanks are due to Frank Goodyear and to Ellen Miles for sponsoring my time in Washington. Frank’s work on imagery of American Indians helped to orient my research on King’s approach to his War Department commission, as well as to the images he produced specifically for the Gallery. Ellen’s guidance complicated my understanding of the hundreds of portraits King produced over the course of his career, and led to my interest in physiognomy. The many, many great scholars at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, curators and fellows alike, contributed to this work in ways large and small. As I increasingly focused in on the collection King presented in his Gallery of Paintings, the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island became an indispensible resource. The Curator of Special Collections for many years there, Lisa vi Long, was incredibly generous with her time and resources, not only when I traveled to Newport but at a moment’s notice on the phone. I will be forever grateful for her help and for her friendship. Finally, thank you to Andrew J. Cosentino. His book has been my constant reference for the past few years. He did all of the work that allowed me to write this dissertation. I have been told that it is remarkable that I have been able to bring an artist to life for whom we have so few surviving documents. What documents I have, I have thanks to Andy Cosentino, and his biography and catalogue of Charles Bird King’s body of work remain the foundation of all King scholarship. I hope that I have done credit to your generosity of spirit. vii “Now Exhibiting:” Charles Bird King’s Picture Gallery, Fashioning American Taste and Nation 1824-1861 Publication No._____________ Rowena Houghton Dasch, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Susan Rather This dissertation is an exploration of Charles Bird King’s Gallery of Paintings. The Gallery opened in 1824 and, aside from a brief hiatus in the mid-1840s, was open to the public through the end of the antebellum era. King, who trained in London at the Royal Academy and under the supervision of Benjamin West, presented to his visitors a diverse display that encompassed portraits, genre scenes, still lifes, trompe l’oeils and history paintings. Though the majority of the paintings on display were his original works across these various genres, at least one third of the collection was made up of copies after the works of European masters as well as after the American portraitist Gilbert Stuart. This study is divided into four chapters. In the first, I explore late Colonial and Early Republic public displays of the visual arts. My analysis demonstrates that King’s Gallery was in step with a tradition of viewing that stretched back to John Smibert’s Boston studio in the mid-eighteenth century and created a visual continuity into the mid- nineteenth century. In a second chapter, focused on portraiture, I examine what it meant viii to King and to his visitors to be “American.” The group of men and women King displayed in his Gallery was far more diverse than typical for the time period. King included many prominent politicians, but no American President after John Quincy Adams (whom King had painted before Adams’ election). Instead he featured portraits of many men of commerce as well as prominent women and numerous American Indians. In the third chapter, I look at a group of King’s original compositions, genre paintings. King’s style in this category was clearly indebted to seventeenth-century Dutch tradition as filtered through an eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British lens, in particular the works of Sir David Wilkie. My final chapter continues the exploration of Dutch influences over King’s work. These paintings draw together the themes of King’s sense of humor, his attitudes towards patronage and his methods of circumventing inadequate patronage through the establishment of the Gallery. Finally, they prompt us to reconsider the importance of European precedents in our understanding of how artists and viewers worked together to establish an American visual cultural dialogue. ix Table of Contents List of Illustrations ................................................................................................ xii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Painter and Gallery Proprietor in the Nation’s Capital ...................................7 The Later Years of the Gallery .....................................................................15 King’s Legacy ...............................................................................................18 Structure of the Study ...................................................................................22 Chapter One – Paintings and other Curiosities: The Art of Staging Public Exhibitions in Colonial and Early Republic America ......................................................27 Public Art Venues in the Colonial and Early Republic Periods ...................32 The Picture Circuit ........................................................................................83 Charles Bird King’s Gallery: More Than Just a “Genteel Resort” ...............96 Conclusion ..................................................................................................114 Chapter Two – “Living Likenesses”: Portraits for King’s Gallery of Paintings .117 Portraits for the Gallery ..............................................................................120 Heroes of the Nation, Men and Women of Washington, and Fancy Pieces124 King and the American Indian Portraits .....................................................135 Ways of Viewing – Physiognomy, Phrenology, and the Nineteenth Century American Audience ...........................................................................148 Physiognomy...............................................................................................149 Phrenology ..................................................................................................159