Art in America Before the Revolution , As a Subject

A rt in Am eric a

Befo re th e R evo lu tio n

EDWI N SWI FT BALCH

Your Excellency : Fellow M emb ers of th e Society of Colonial

Art in America before the Revolution , as a subject

for study , divides itself perforce into two divisions . The

ﬁrst is the native indigenous art , the art of the American

an Indi s , or Amerinds , as some ethnologists now call them . which is prehistoric to the landing of the Northmen on the

American continent , which still lingers in some places , but which is gradually dying out with its makers . This art

o . extended all over America , fr m Patagonia to Canada Except perhaps in Alaska and along the Arctic it is prae

m en . tically one art , the art of the Red It varies locally , so that one may say that there are several subdivisions of this f art , but it is always su ﬁciently similar as to make it almost f certain that it is the art of one race . It is also su ﬁciently distinct from the arts of the races of the Old World as to make it almost certain that it is prob ably mainly an

autochthonous art ; that is , an art which grew up on the soil

and was not imported . One wave of this art at one period ﬂowed over the plains of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers , namely the

Moundb uilders s art of the , among who e mounds some most

an d interesting potteries sculptures have been found . A

later wave , or perhaps merely descent through time , spread 1 4 .

! U art ver the nited States the art of our own Indians , an

which extended all over the original Ame rican Colonies .

—in 1 06—a Only the other day October , 9 handsomely decorated red pottery vase was found whilst digging the W foundations of some skyscraper in New York City , here it is n ow on exhibition in the American Museum of Natural

History . This art rose to its greatest heights in Peru and

Mexico . In Peru it is principally found in the shape of

s potteries , in many case admirably sculpted into human m heads or human ﬁgures , or into ani als . Many of these a l are sculptural ; many are c ricatura ; some , showing the ' ff i e ects of disease , are pathological . These Peruv an heads , E curiously enough , often resemble uropean heads , and one might ascribe them to Spanish inﬂ uence had not such quan b e d tities been dug up in prehistoric graves . In Mexico, si es

and . potteries , there are some pictures many stone sculptures Some of the heads are grandly do ne and resemble Egyptian u h a l i . o s heads M c of the Mexican art , unf rtun te y , loath ’ an some d hideous . The motives are snakes and death s

I in . t heads is not art which has evolved these carvings , but an attempt to bring out in stone some ghastly supe r stitio ns which must have been rampant through Central ’ h h e e t America . There is some evidence t at t d a h s heads

t a o f were rela ed to cannibalism . At any rate , study their art has made me feel that Cortez did a rather goo d work M x li n when he wiped out old e ican civi zatio , and that it is useless to waste sympathy on such a gang of toughs as

Montezuma and the Aztec priests . I consider some phases of Mexican art as th e lowest and most degraded ever e r ached by any art .

s Along the Arctic we ﬁnd the art of the E kimo , a race probably allied to the North Asiatics ; and along the shores of Alaska , we ﬁnd an art which , while it has some Mexican

a s x tr its , showing ome cousinship to Me ican art , yet in the s main is related clo ely to the art of the Brown races , the Polynesians and the Australasians generally ; to the art of

New ! . ealand , of Rapa Nui , of Papua , and of Hawaii The second division of my subject is the art of the t intrusive white races of Europe , which its makers brough with them across the Atlantic into the New World . This

S is theEM , which cannot be termed correctly

- l t - b ut n la Colonial art , because it is rea ly no hing tra sp nted

European art .

The art of Colonial times is a purely intrusive art , an i

- art which was full ﬂedged before reaching Americansh o res .

o e It was br ught over by the Europ an immigrants , and if we turn over the pages of history we ﬁnd that there were three main streams of European immigration into America : a French stream into Canada ; an English and Dutch stream into the United States ; a Spanish and Portugu e se stream

o . o int Central and South America If , then , we lo k at the arts of these nations in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen turies , we ﬁnd the immediate parents of the art of America in Colonial times . V I do not share the iew , held by some ethnologists , that religious beliefs have anything to do with the underlying

motives of an artist . It is the esthetic sense , which all men

a have in a greater or lesser degree , which m kes some men want to paint or sculpt . Some men like to imitate , to try

o a c t to repr duce men or anim ls or lands apes , because hese appeal to wh at we may call their esthetic faculties . But as it is necessary for most artists to live by their

for s work , the demand certain form of art is pretty certain to regulate the output . And as the ruling church in France and in Spain not only admitted paintings and sculptures to

its buildings , but paid to have them , it is only natural that many artists in th ose countries made their living by painting

r and sculpting c uc iﬁ xio ns and madonnas and saints . This

e S was don even more in pain than in France , and though 6

we ﬁnd some ﬁne portraiture in Spain , with Velasquez as the great master , there was done for churches and convents still more painting , whose best known Spanish makers are ! Murillo , Ribera and urbaran .

As a necessary corollary to this , the art that came into

Spanish Mexico was this same church art , which descended immediately from such painters as Murillo , Ribera and

! - urbaran . And in the churches of Mexico to day there are many such pictures which either were brought over from the

o Old World , or were painted in Mexic by painters following these already conventionalized traditio nal subj ects .

The same is true of old French Canada , only in a lesser degree . There are still in ! uebec some few church pictures which certainly antedate the Revolution , but I cannot say whether these were painted on American soil . In Holland and in England the situation of the artist was quite different from what it was in Spain or in France . Not only did the ruling churches not pay for pictures and sculptures , but they did not tolerate them in their buildings , and in some cases the zeal of their adherents went so far that , if I am not mistaken , they smashed the works of art that had come down to them fro m earlier times . The artists therefore naturally worked in other directions , in the lines of least resistance and most proﬁt , and in the seventeenth century we ﬁnd a great art in full bloom in Holland , with

Helst Rembrandt , Franz Hals and Van der in portraiture ;

oo Paul Potter and Cuyp in animal pictures ; Pieter de H ghe , Jan Steen and M etz u in genre ; and Hobbema and Ruysdael in landscape , among its leading exponents . This Dutch art must have been well supported or it would never have reached the output , both in quality and quantity , which makes it one of the great art epochs of all time .

o It is a curi us fact , nevertheless , that the greatest painter , perhaps , of religious subj ects was a Dutchman , “ ! “ a Th y . e t Rembrandt In his Supp r Emmaus , e Hol 7

r Family , the etching of The Hundred Guilde Plate , “ ! and The Presentation in the Temple , for instance , possi b “ ! bly ecause these pictures were not potboilers , there is a technical mastery and a depth of feeling probably unattained by any Italian or Spanish painters in religious subjects , and

w s in this line , as ell as in all group of ﬁgures or in portraits ,

Rembrandt stands easily at the top . In England art advanced much less rapidly than in ’

Holland . Doubtless this was due partly to England s insu larit y , partly to a certain inaptitude of the English race

to for art , and partly the then still strongly developed system , which among the Hindus is called the caste system , and which two centuries ago prevailed sufﬁ ciently in Eng land for royalty and the nobility to be practically the only important patrons of art . Landscape did not grow up in

England until the latter half of the eighteenth century , when Wilson became its ﬁrst , but now almost forgotten , master . Royalty and aristocracy , however , probably con sidered that they were goo d -loo king and were willing to pay , in some cases cash , to see their features on canvas , and the result was that in the sixteenth , seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were some good po rtrait painters in England , almost all foreigners , among whom may be l mentioned Holbein , C ouet , Antonio Moro , Sir Godfrey

K Sir neller , Vandyke , Peter Lely , Raeburn , Sir joshua

Reynolds and Gainsborough . The names of the painters working in Holland and in England in the sixteenth , seven teen th and eighteenth centuries give the clue to their de scen dants in the American Colonies in the eighteenth , and these naturally turned to portraiture and historic incident , although , unfortunately , they were much weaker in all respects than their great predecessors .

The art of portrait painting , as we understand the term , is practically the art of placing on a ﬂ at surface in colo rs an imitative reproduction of th e sitter in order to 8

convey to the onlooker a likeness of the sitter . As far as th e I know , our imitative portrait painting is conﬁned to

White races , and even among them it is a late form of art .

not Kaldean s I am aware that it existed among the , the

o ur Assyrians , or the Egyptians , and the ﬁrst portraits in 200 style extant I have seen are the Greek heads , of about

. C . . B , which have been dug up in the Fayum , Egypt These nd i t are really the beginnings of European portraiture , a is probably fairly accurate to say that the ultimate direct foun tain-head of the art of American Colonial times is the Greek art of the Fayum . There was almost no art among the Colonials of the seventeenth century . This is perhaps not to be wondered at , when we look at their environment . It was a struggle for life . People had to plant corn , and cut trees , and hunt

o f . for food , not think works of art It would not have been pleasant posing for one ’ s portrait when the sitting might be interrupted suddenly by a Red man sneaking Up behind the back fence and shooting a stone-headed arrow into the sit ’ ter s ribs . Still , it is almost certain that there was some painting i n the Colonies by Dutchmen in the seventeenth

D rr h . a ac Es a century Henry , q , of the Philadelphi Bar , informs me that he has seen some old records stating that some po rtraits of Indians were painted by Dutchmen in their settlements on the Delaware , and this must have been some time between 1 62 3 and 1 664 . He has also see n some old engravings or drawi ngs of In dians which must date ’ far back and are probably the work of Dutchm en . There is every probability that the Dutch did do so me painting at

e d this early time , since it coincides with the best p rio of

o the art of Holland . The f llowing quotation also shows that there was a little - portrait drawing in the C olonies “ ! ’ 1 00 : before 7 Cotton Mather , in his Magnolia , speaking

o of the aversion of John Wils n to sit for his portrait , says ! Secretary Rawson introd uced the limner ’ —showing ! there 9

were limners in Boston in Another clue to an early artist in the Colonies is found in the following sen “ : tence There is a surmise that one Tom Child , who died ! 1 06 was s in Boston in 7 , a still earlier limner of feature ! In the eighteenth century conditions had become rather

o o s m re settled and p rtrait painters , who e names have come

down to us , begin to appear . I have traced so far , either

r m oo th e f o their own works or in b ks , names of some forty painters who were in America in Colonial times : John Wat-w

Sm b ert Rob ert son , Peter . Cooper , Peter Pelham , John y V

Feke , Matthew Pratt , Williams , rt , Jona l l . a oo e than B Blackburn , Green , Theus yp ,

Kil run n H ess li s o a . b e u Wo l ston , L , Taylor , Gustavus , Cain ,

n Frazier , Abraham Dela oy , Patience Wright , Winstanley ,

Henry Bembridge , Cosmo Alexander , James Peale , Ramage ,

Sml th E Field , Trenchard , Manly , Durand , , I . arle , Camp

b e . e ! ll , T Coram , Thomas Sp nce Duch , Joseph Wright ,

Charl ilson Peale , Benjamin West ohn Singleton C Charles Gilbert Stuart and r i mb ul Lt Certain men are also occasionally mentioned as early

. e! American painters Among thes are William Williams ,

Mather !or Matthew ! Brown , Robert

! T e n uck rm a . Th c M emo rial is or o B oston 1 881 Vo l . I V . 82 . T H t y f , , , p 3 I I wi sh to state th at I co n sid er th i s p ap er as an o n ly appro x imat ely co rrect sketch o f th e art o f Co l on ial tim es an d th at it is n eith er ex h au st iv e n o r sci en tiﬁcally accurate in regard to th e arti st s o f Co l o n i al es ! n . a e o ds are a a n a ess e to m e an d h a e tim rigi l r c r pr ctic lly i cc ibl , I v h ad to d epen d fo r h i sto rical an d bio graph ical d at a abo ut th e p ai n ter s o n se on d h a a o es h o se s a e en s am u n a e to e . c ry ut riti , w t t m t I bl v rify A o n h ese a h o es are : W a D n a isto o th e R ise m g t ut riti illi m u l p , H ry f an d ro ess o th e A s o D esi n in t e United S tates N ew Yo P gr f rt f g j h , rk , 1 8 en T . T e an B o o k o A rtists A m e ican A is Li e 34 ; H ry uck rm , f , r rt t f , ’ 86 n 1 S. G . W. B e a n Ea l Am e ican Art a e s N ew M o n th l 7 ; j mi , r y r , H rp r y M a azin l L e Vo . I ! 1 8 en S so n Th e Lives o Emin en t g , , 79 ; H ry imp , f h iladel h ians 1 8 . Th o as S h a an d Th o son Wes o t P p , 59 ; J m c rf mp tc t , is to o h ilad el h ia 1 d h a es h n . n an 88 Vo l. I o D h a H ry f P p , 4, L; J C mpli C rl '

. e n s C clo edia o ai t i aﬁm n ers and ain t n h a es . C C P rki , y p f P P g ; C rl H , Th e S o o Ame i can ain in N ew Yo 1 0 . t ry f r P t g , rk , 9 7 am n d e ed al so fo r r E n I i bt much valuabl e i n fo rm ati o n to M . r est S o f o d A ss s an L a an o f th e s a o e o f P en n s l p f r , i t t ibr ri Hi to ric l S ci ty y

an a. Th e is s o f th e ar are o wn v i critic m t my . 1 6

D R b t unlap , Colonel Henry Sargent , Edward Savage , o er

d e Malb on e Wertmiiller . g Pine , Polke , , Sharpless , , St

Gulla h er K Memin , Martin , g , Robertson , Samuel ing , Bel

o zoni , Roberts and Malcolm . S me of these men may have painted before the Declaration of Independence , but in the

- main they are post Revolutionary painters .

o 1 68 John Watson was a Scotch man . He was b rn in 5 ,

1 1 o and came to the Co lonies in 7 5 . He painted p rtraits in

a . Phil delphia and Perth Amboy , New Jersey He died on 2 2 August , Two little half lengths , now in the His to ric al Society of Pennsylvania , have been ascribed to him

re re by one or two writers . One , done in India ink wash , p

m e sents a man in a suit of ar or , and is inscrib d as a portrait K - of Governor eith . The other is a lead pencil sketch of a ’ al resc lady in a very f o costume with a shepherd s crook , and ! is inscribed Lady Keith . That these drawings are by Watson is uncertain ; but personally I doubt whether they are by the same man .

Peter C! oo per was one of the earliest painters of

Colonial times , and curiously enough he painted landscapes .

Of the man himself I know nothing , except that a note in the Library Company of Ph iladelphia says : It appears by

M inutes o th e Comm o Council 2 1 1 the f n , May 7 , 7 7 , that Peter Coo pe r was admitted a freeman of Philadelphia on payment of He was pe rhaps the ﬁrst landscape painter of Colonial America . For at the entrance of the i Library Company is a p cture of his , presented by the Hon .

George M . Dallas , Minister to England . In a letter dated “ 1 2 1 8 . London , January , 57 Mr Dallas says that a mem be r o f Parliament found th i s picture in a London curiosity shop and gave it to him , and that it was believed in London to have been painted in 1 72 0 ; he also calls it an antique ! “

. i daub On a sort of shield, the picture is inscr bed as The

o f South East Prospect of the City Philadelphia , by Peter ! Cooper , painter . Many of the houses are numbered , and

1 2

e at sea and taken as a prisoner to Spain , where he is beli ved to have obtained some notions of painting . He settled in

o o . Newp rt , where there are still a few of his p rtraits He 1 6 also painted in New York and in 74 in Philadelphia . He died at Bermuda in the latter half of the eighteenth century , a - ged abo ut forty four . 1 Matthew Pratt was born in Philadelphia in 734, and 1 died there in 805 . He was a pupil of Benjamin West in

- 1 6 1 68. London in 7 4 7 He lived mostly in Philadelphia , and for ma ny years painted signs and hou se decorations

t o there before turning o p rtraiture . These signs appear to have been more highly thought of than his portraits , and j udging from what has been said of them they were probably more artistic . Two of his canvases , portraits of Benj amin

now Penns l West and of Mrs . Benj amin West , are in the y f vania Academy of Fine Arts . His most ambitious e fort , “ ! known as The American School , is now in the Metro

t e politan Museum of Art , New York , and represents h painting room of Benjamin West in London . Matthew Pratt ’ s pictures are simply tyro ’ s work and need no special comment .

Williams was an Englishman who , it is believed , was

e the ﬁrst teacher of Benj amin West . He painted som por a 1 - traits in Phil delphia about 746 47 .

Sm b ert so n Sm b ert Nathaniel y , of John y , was born in

2 0 1 8 1 6 . Boston , January , 734, and died there November , 75

He started at portrait painting and gave great promise .

Jonathan B . Blackburn was born in Connecticut about 1 700. Another account says he came over to the Co lonies 1 0 from England . He painted portraits in Boston from 75 1 to 765 .

1 0 Green arrived in the Colonies about 75 , and painted portraits from then until towards 1 785 . Theus painted portraits in South Carol ina from about 1 0 1 8 75 to 7 5 . Miss Marguerite Ravenel , of Charleston , I 3

informs me that some of his portraits have been attributed

to Copley .

n 6 John Meng was born in Germa town on February ,

1 o 1 . 734, and died ab ut 754 He is said to have painted some po rtraits There are several in the Historical Society o f

Pennsylvania which may be by him .

! James Claypoo le may have painted portraits in Phila

o u 1 delphia ab t 756 .

s o o lasto n sub Wolla ton , or W , was probably a British

ect j , who paid a visit to the American Colonies . He painted

r 1 8 1 . port aits in Philadelphia in 75 , and in Maryland in 759 He al so painted portraits in Virginia and Maryland about 1 2 77 . Among these was one of Mrs . Washington .

Kil runn L . b was probably an Englishman . He painted

1 1 portraits in New York from about 76 1 to 772 .

1 Taylor painted miniatures in the Colonies about 760.

H esselius S Gustavus , probably a wede , although one

authority calls him an Englishman , was painting portraits

1 6 in 7 3 at Annapolis , Maryland , where he was the ﬁrst

teacher of Charles Wilson Peale . There are two portraits

by him in the Historical Society of Philadelphia , of an ugly

gray color , and wooden in drawing . C ain painted portraits in Maryland about 1 760.

az 1 6 . Fr ier was painting at Norfolk , Virginia , about 7 3 Abraham Delanoy was born about 1 740 and died about 1 i 786. He was a pup l of B enjamin West and painted por

1 60 traits from about 7 until his decease .

b 1 2 1 8 . Patience Wright was orn in 7 5 , and died in 7 5 She was of ! uaker descent and resided in Colonial times at

Bordentown , New Jersey . She used to model heads and

u o ﬁg res , principally in wax , which are said to show s me

imitative talent . She started her son , Joseph Wright , at

painting , and is probably the earliest woman artist in the

United States . 1 4

Wistanle o y , or Winstanley , painted p rtraits in the 1 6 Colonies about 7 9 .

o Henry Bembridge , of Philadelphia , painted p rtraits

1 0- 1 800 about 77 . He studied in Europe under Mengs

B atto ni and , and had enj oyed a liberal education . There are some portraits of his in Charleston .

o Cosm Alexander , a Scotchman , came over to the 1 0 Colonies from England about the year 77 . He resided , for awhile at least , at Newport , where he was the ﬁrst teacher of Gilbert Stuart . He died in Scotland between 1 772 and 1 775 .

James Peale was an early painter of miniatures , about 1 770.

Ramage was an early miniature painter . He was an

a Irish gentlem n , and painted many small portraits in Boston

1 1 about 77 , and afterwards .

Field painted po rtraits about 1 770.

Trenchard perhaps painted portraits as early as 1 770.

Manly painted portraits in Virginia about 1 772 . Durand painted a number of po rtraits in Virginia about

o Smith was a portrait painter , pr bably of late Colonial

m o ti es . He was a native of L ng Island , and , it is believed , was one of the ﬁrst Americans to study painting in Italy . E T . arle po ssibly painted portraits in Connecticut in

1 775 . He afterwards studied with Benj amin West , and

1 86- 1 2 between 7 79 painted portraits in Connecticut , New

York and Charleston . He also drew some historical scenes , possibly the earliest attempts of the kind in America . Some

-at- of these were engraved by a comrade arms of his ,

o Do little .

Campbell painted po rtraits in late Colonial times .

m o 1 80 Cora painted portraits in Charleston ab ut 7 , and

1 possibly did so before 776. 1 5

Thomas Spence Duch! may have painted po rtraits in the Coloni es immediately before the Revolution . He cer

inl . ta y did so shortly afterwards An example of his work , in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania , shows that his color was rather more mellow than that of most of his

o fellow craftsmen . In some cases , however , the p or cold color which has come down to us in many pictures of Colonial times is undoubtedly due to the cochineal lakes and the bright , probably lead , yellows fading out or blackening .

Joseph Wright was born at Bordentown , New Jersey , was 1 6 1 . in 75 , and died in Philadelphia in 793 He a pupil of Benjamin West and had also been to Paris . Among other portraits , he painted one of General Washington and

- one of Mrs . Washington . He was a designer and die sinker U a h e at the nited States Mint at Phil delphia , and probably designed some of the earliest coins and medals struck in

America . D i two oo rn ck . . F . V . and O A Bullard are mentioned as painters of Colonial times .

There are several engravers of Colonial times . Na

o 1 6 . thaniel Hurd , ab ut 7 4 , was one of the earliest Paul 1 66 1 1 Revere , about 7 ; Amos Doolittle , about 77 ; Smithers , 1 1 about 773 ; Jennings , about 774 ; and Henry Dawkins ,

1 o a e about 774 , all did s me engr ving, most probably on copp r

ufﬁ l plates . Edward D e d also designed and executed several 1 medals abo ut 756. A rather od d phase of po rtraiture in Colonial times are _ the silhouettes , generally cut out of black paper , by which some of our ancestors have sent down their features to '

o . W p sterity Dr . S . eir Mitchell tells me that the Friends , while objecting to ordinary portraits , did not object to sil

h o uettes . , and this was probably one reason for their vogue

How accurate they are as likenesses is hard to determine , but they were done with the help of a sort of measuring machine . There are several from Revolutionary times in 1 6

th e Library Company of Philadelphia , which are interesting because they were done by Maj or Andr! . Five of the painters of Colonial times are much superior S to the others . These are John ingleton Copley , Benjamin h e West , Charles Wilson Peale , C arl s Gilbert Stuart and

John Trumbull . Bo John Singleton Copley was born in ston , July 3 ,

1 o 1 8 1 . 73 7 , and died in L ndon , September 9 , 5 H e was a

. a pupil of Peter Pelham , his stepfather He p inted in

1 1 America until 774 , when he went to Rome , and in 775 he went to London . He painted portraits and historic inci dents . Some of his portraits are fair in proportions and in i ff color , but often the ﬁgures are sti , with hard outlines . To use studio language , his drawing is rather tight . He made other mistakes . For instance , in his portrait group of Mr . and Mrs . Izzard , painted at Rome , and now in the Boston seu Mu m of Fine Arts , the ﬁgures are fairly well drawn and a p inted , but the landscape background in which the Colos seum loo ms up in the distance i s lighted as would be a

! . e tapestry , not an pen window It was , of course , the styl of the times , but nevertheless such older painters as Pieter de Hooghe or Antonio Moro would not have been guilty of such a blunder . Copley seems to me to have been a less

a a or S e artistic handler of p int th n West tuart , but a b tter

m o draughts an than either . In s me of his historic pictures “ M ! also, such as the Death of ajor Pierson , now in the e Boston Museum of Fine Arts , Copl y rises to a higher level a than West as a p inter of subject pictures . They are suc cessful illustrations , something one could not say , for t’ “ a ! instance , of Wes s Death on the P le Horse .

Benj amin West was born at Springﬁeld , Pennsylvania , 1 0 1 8 m October , 73 , of a ! uaker fa ily , and died in London , 1 1 1 82 l 0. Ph ilade March , He started painting portraits in

r . 1 60 phia , then moved to New Yo k In 7 he went to Italy 1 6 to h is and in 7 3 London , where he resided most of li fe, I 7 and where he became president of the Royal Academy after i Sir Joshua Reynolds . West sometimes pa nted great com “ th e positions , of which Death on the Pale Horse , now in

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , is perhaps the most o widely known , and it may be said that these comp sitions are -u to singularly unsuccessful . They are made p attempts limn something which the artist never saw and never felt “ ! randes mac h ines o g , a Frenchman w uld call them ; and they entirely lack any qual ity of beauty and any power o f ’ imparting artistic emotion . Some of West s portraits , how

ff . ever , are very di erent from his big failures They show fair drawing , fair proportions , fair light and shade , a pleas

o . ant subdued color , and the outline is l st and found —Two of his best portraits are of kinswomen of mine own o ne of Mrs . Joseph Shippen , and one of Mrs . Admiral Digby as a little gi rl . On the whole I should say that Benj amin West painted the best portraits which have come down to

- us from pre Revolutionary times . Nevertheless , as he spent

' t n be his li e in E gland , he must considered rather as an

English than an American painter .

h es o o C arl Wils n Peale was b rn in Chesterton , Mary o n 1 6 1 1 land , April , 74 , and died in Philadelphia , February

2 2 1 82 . , 7 During the Revolution he served in the army and commanded a company at the battles of Trenton and

Germantown . He was a versatile man . He worked in d leather , woo and metal , and made harnesses , clocks and silver ornaments ; also false teeth , notably General Wash ’ i o n s ggt , out of walrus tusks . He started a museum of m e scientiﬁc speci ens , and help d in forming a school of ﬁne arts , which eventually became the Pennsylvan ia Academy of the Fine A rts . He studied painting under Gustavus Hes o 1 0- 1 selins at Annap lis , Copley at Boston , and in 77 774

o under Benjamin West at London . He painted p rtraits

n principally in Maryland a d Philadelphia . A number of these are now i n the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 1 8

Francis Scott Key ; Robert Morris ; the artist himself ; the ih artist his museum ; and George Clymer . In many cases the historic impo rtance of his sitters makes his work very valuable . His work is tolerably goo d in mo st technical qualities , such as drawing, proportions and light and shade .

i a The handling of the paint is dull , yet I should m gine that his portraits are fair likenesses , which show something of the characteristics of the sitters . He is distinctly one of the best artists of Colonial times .

e Charles Gilb rt Stuart was born at Narragansett , d 1 Rho e Island , on December 3 , 755 , and died in Boston ,

2 1 2 8 - 8 . 1 2 July 7 , He went to Scotland in 77 with his s 1 teacher , Co mo Alexander . In 775 he became an assistant 1 to Benjamin West . In 785 he set up a studio of his own in

o . 1 2 Lond n In 79 he returned to America . He spent most

o r of his time after that in Bosto n . Among his works are p f o . o traits Washington , Mrs Washington , J hn Adams , Jef ferso n o a , Robert Morris , Th m s Willing, William Bingham ,

Alexander J . Dallas , Paul Revere , Monroe , Stephen

Decatur , Chief Justice Shippen , H orace Binney , Benj amin

West , and many other prominent persons . I am inclined to think that Stuart is usually overrated as a portrait painter .

Too often the fundamentals are neglected in his work . He seems to have made it a practice of concentrating all his knowledge on the head and do ing the rest of the picture too carelessly . He not infrequently placed his heads low o n the canvas . Often hi s portraits have impossibly low w down shoulders , little short arms and d arfed torsos , the

e too to . body , that is , b ing much small in relation the head Whether Stuart did this on purpo se or not must remain uncertain , but it is bad drawing , and therefore poor work .

Just as in the case of many other portrait painters , how w ever , the blame for his errors doubtless rests largely ith the sitters . Some of them surely would not give Stuart sufﬁcient sittings ; sitters sometimes think three o r four sit

1 80 o 7 he went to Lond n to study under West , but was

imprisoned for eight months , and returned to America in 1 82 7 . After the peace he went again to England . He

painted the Battle of Bunker H ill , the Surrender of Bur

goyne , the Surrender of Cornwallis , the Resignation of

Washington at Annapolis , the Battle of Princeton , the Battle

Ru of Trenton , portraits of Washington , Hamilton , fus K ing , and many other pictures . John Trumbull was a fair

draughtsman and a fair colorist , and some of his portraiture

is rather nicely handled . His historic pictures , while they

o o are clever c mp sitions , seem to me to be deﬁcient in the most impo rtant element of art ; they lack beauty and there

fore do not produce emotion . They are really illustrations ;

o o very go d illustrations of hist ric incidents , but quite as suitable for the illumination of the page of a bo ok as to be

broadly displayed on a wall .

renc h man I once heard a F , . a Paris connoisseur and “ ’ ’ : l l a artenait a l ecole dealer in pictures , say of Stuart pp

A n laise s g . I think this ob ervation is perfectly accurate . But I am i nclined to go further and to say that I think that all the painting of Colonial times be longed to the so -called

o c English school of p rtraiture , which s hool , however , prae tically consisted of foreigners who had come to England

from the continent . The painters of Colonial times did not form an American school at all : American individuality 1 82 did not begin to assert itsel f in painting before 5 , and the painters of Colonial times and of Revolutionary times are really nothing but a reﬂex of those living in the mother

country . None of the painters of Co lonial times proper can rank

among the great portrait painters . It is impossible to really

classify painters , but it may be hinted at roughly , and refer

b e ring to portraiture only , Rembrandt and Velasquez may

safely placed at the front . Then come a number of great

e portraitists , not all p rhaps equally excellent , but all dis

i n t nctly great in one or more portraits . ! e might mention 2 1

o H el t am ng these , perhaps , Titian, Holbein , Hals, Van der s , ' a and so m e Leon rdo , Hogarth , others . And among these

a men the best Colonial portrait p inter cannot be included .

e e r e Gilb rt Stuart in his b st wo k , p rhaps, may be ranked ﬁ rst— t among rate portraitists , but he is really ra her post a Revolutionary than Coloni l .

s in Of culpture in Colonial times there is little to say , fact , sculpture was a practically unknown art in the Colonies . Abo ut the only genuine pro -Revoluti o nary sculpture I have “ seen is one you doubtless all also have seen : Le Ch ien ’ ! “ ! D or , the Golden Dog , at ! uebec . Even this may have e b en carved in Europe , but I believe the artist is unknown . s I It dates from omewhere around 750. It is a fairly good

- high relief carving , but unfortunately much weathered away by exposure . Under it are carved the well known lines

“ ’ e s s um h en ui on e l o s J ui c i q r g , En le on ean e en d s m on e o s r g t j pr r p , ’ Un e s en d a u i n es o n en t mp vi r q t p i t v u , ’ ! ! u je m o rd rai qui m aura m o rd u .

“ ’ ! L e Ch ien D or was put up as a threat and it hung ’ over the doo rway of its original owner s house until the latter was torn down and replaced b y the ! uebec post ofﬁce . Now the “ Golden Dog ! is over one of the doorways of

os ffi the p t o ce , in the spot where it has always breathed

- vengeance . The artistic style of the bas relief is distinctly French Renaissance ; there is nothing whatever English abb ut it . It reminds one artistically of the Salamander of

Francois I . e Still , there is one sculptor who doubtless b gan in o Colonial times , although he must be looked on as a p st

Revolutionary artist . This is William Rush , probably the

ﬁrst American sculptor , to whom my attention was called

Bledd n . by M r . W . y Powell William Rush was born in 1 6 2 Philadelphia on July 4 , 75 , and died there on January 7, ’ 1 83 3 . He served in Washington s army and several times in the Philadelphia City Council s. He carved many statues , making almost a Specialty of the ﬁgu reh eads of ships . 2 2

There is another art of which I wish to say a few words , as an example of how some of our American arts and industries can be traced back to some distant corner of

. e a the globe This is the art of til m king , which is now being D revived at oylestown . It came to Pennsylvania before the

Revolution , brought over by Pennsylvania Dutch , although it did not take much hold at the time . It is claimed by some persons that the Dutch go t their taste for tiles from the

Chinese , with whom they were trading already in the seven teenth century . It seems to me , however , more likely that the Dutch got this art from the Spaniards in the times when Charles the Fifth was their ruling sovereign ; the Spaniards learnt to make tiles fro m the Moors of Southern Spain ; the Moo rs brought the art with them from Egypt and Arabia in their conquest of North Africa . But they had received it themselves at least partly from Assyria and Persia , where

0 . the Palace of Darius at Sousa of 4 4 B C . had numerous

- friezes made of colored tiles , and tile making undoubtedly

o Kaldea g es back to and early Egypt , from which it probably gradually descended to Pennsylvania .

a n o e T king Colo ial times as a wh le , one cannot sp ak of them as an epoc h when there was anything like a great art . Nor can one rank any artist of Colonial times as more than

- N everth e about third rate among the artists of the world . less some of these men emphatically did well . They had no training ; there were no real academies where anyone could learn the basis of all painting , how to draw ; they had no artistic environment , no old masters nor galleries to refer

- to , no fellow painters to sharpen their wits against ; their

-m patrons , on who they depended for a living , probably knew ’ nk and cared mighty little about art for art s sake . I thi it is a remarkable fact , not that these men painted no better than they did , but that they painted as well as they did . And I think that the Soc iety of Colonial Wars is true to its mission in trying to do something to keep their memory green . Christopher Witt is believed to have “ o rtrait Kel iu s of Johannes p , the hermit which is n o w in the Historical Society Vl y attention was called to this painting

Esq . , who also informs me that Henry on copper plates , in Pennsylvania , as