The Painter's Chair (36 page)
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Authors: Hugh Howard
17
. Washington,
Diaries
, October 19, 1785.
18
. John A. Washington to W. J. Hubard, October 8, 1859, quoted in Morgan and Fielding,
The Life Portraits of Washington and Their Replicas
(1931), p. 112.
19
. Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Harrison, January 24, 1786.
20
. Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, January 4, 1786.
21
. George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, August 1, 1786.
22
. Gouverneur Morris,
A Diary of the French Revolution
(1939), pp. 107, 109.
23
. Washington to Lafayette, February 1, 1784.
CHAPTER 6:
Three Friends of Mr. Trumbull
1
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
, pp. 82–83.
2
. John Trumbull to Jonathan Trumbull Jr., September 23, 1784.
3
. Trumbull,
Autobiography,
pp. 86–87. What ever the imperfections of the portrait, the boy portrayed would later marry Trumbull’s favorite niece, Faith
Trumbull, and become an important art patron (of Thomas Cole, among others), amateur artist, and founder of the Wadsworth
Athenaeum in Hartford.
4
. John Trumbull to Jonathan Trumbull Jr., August 15, 1784.
5
. John Trumbull to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1789.
6
. Alberts,
Benjamin West
(1978), pp. 106–7.
7
. Ibid., pp. 107–108.
8
. John Trumbull to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., November 3, 1784.
9
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 87.
10
. Benjamin West to Charles Willson Peale, June 15, 1783. Quoted in Dorinda Evans,
Benjamin West and His American Students
(1980), p. 86.
11
. John Trumbull to Jonathan Trumbull Jr., November 15, 1784. Yale University Library, Trumbull papers.
12
. Jaffe,
Trumbull
(1975), p. 324.
13
. “Miscellanies,” in
The Artist’s Repository and Drawing Magazine
4 (1796), p. 25, cited in Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 87, fn 11.
14
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 89.
15
. Abigail Adams,
Letters
, vol. I, pp. 126–27.
16
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), pp. 92–93.
17
. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, September 20, 1785.
18
. Howard C. Rice Jr.
Thomas Jefferson’s Paris
(1976), pp. 51–53.
19
. Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, September 4, 1785.
20
. Thomas Jefferson to Col. Nicholas Lewis, July 11, 1788.
21
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), pp. 102–103.
22
. Ibid., p. 103.
23
. Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786.
24
. Much of the Jefferson-Cosway correspondence was published for the first time in
My Head and My Heart
by Helen Duprey Bullock, in 1945; Marie Kimball’s
Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789
(1950) offers a particularly measured and detailed account.
25
. Susan R. Stein’s
The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
(1993) is an invaluable resource in understanding Jefferson’s acquisitive instincts, both at home and abroad. For material
regarding the Hôtel de Langeac, see especially pages 22–34. Again, Mrs. Kimball’s volume,
Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789
(1950) offers a supplementary view (pp. 108ff.).
26
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 93.
27
. Thomas Jefferson to Ezra Stiles, September 1, 1786.
28
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 146.
29
. Ibid., p. 163.
30
. Joseph J. Ellis,
His Excellency, George Washington
(2004), p. 193.
31
. David Humphreys,
The Life of General Washington
, quoted in Flexner,
George Washington
(1972), p. 89.
32
. George Washington to Patrick Henry, September 24, 1787.
33
. George Washington to Lafayette, April 28, 1788.
34
. George Washington to Henry Lee, September 22, 1788.
35
. George Washington to Lafayette, January 29, 1789.
36
. George Washington to George Steptoe Washington, March 23, 1789.
37
. George Washington to Henry Knox, April 1, 1789.
38
. John Trumbull to Jonathan Trumbull, December 27, 1786.
39
. The thirteen he announced were the six already listed along with
The Surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga
and
The Resignation of General Washington.
In time he would complete these eight, but in his initial offering he also listed five he would not execute:
The Treaty with France
,
The Signing of the Treaty of Peace
,
The Evacuation of New York by the British
,
The President Received by the Ladies of Trenton and The Arch
, and
The Inauguration of the President.
Later he would add still another,
The Battle of Eutaw Springs
, though that, too, would never be finished.
40
. John Trumbull to Harriet Wadsworth, April 4, 1790.
41
. John Trumbull to Lloyd Nicholas Rogers, November 10, 1825.
42
.
Gazette of the U.S.,
July 8, 1789.
43
. John Trumbull to Lloyd Nicholas Rogers (Eliza Custis’s son-in-law), quoted in Edgar P. Richardson, “A Penetrating Characterization
of Washington by John Trumbull” (1967), p. 22.
44
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 170.
45
. John Trumbull to Daniel Wadsworth, September 7, 1803.
CHAPTER 7:
“The Washington Family”
1
. Joseph Willard to George Washington, November 7, 1789.
2
. George Washington to Joseph Willard, December 3, 1789.
3
. Josiah Quincy,
Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy
(1874), p. 51.
4
. Louisa Dresser, “Edward Savage, 1761–1817” (1952), p. 195.
5
. Smibert,
Notebook
(1969), p. 85.
6
. Richard H. Saunders, author of this generation’s authoritative book on the painter,
John Smibert: Colonial America’s First Portrait Painter
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, p. 173), notes the “pronounced influence” of
The Bermuda Group
on Robert Feke’s
Isaac Royall and His Family
and John Greenwood’s
The Greenwood-Lee Family,
painted in 1741 and 1747, respectively.
7
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 120.
8
. Harold E. Dickson, “Artists as Showmen” (1973), pp. 4–6.
9
.
Gazette of the United States
(Philadelphia), February 20, 1796.
10
.
Columbian Gallery
(1802), pp. 3–4, cited in Ellen G. Miles,
American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century
(1995), pp. 156–57, fns. 11 and 48.
11
.
Gazette of the United States
(Philadelphia), February 20, 1796.
12
. Charles Henry Hart, “Edward Savage, Painter and Engraver” (1905), p. 11.
13
.
Columbia Centinel
, August 8, 1798, p. 3.
14
. George Washington to Clemont Biddle, March 19, 1798.
15
. Wick,
George Washington
(1982), pp. 122–23.
16
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, p. 321.
17
. Cash accounts in George Washington,
Papers, Colonial Series
, vol. VIII, p. 261.
18
. Decatur,
Private Affairs of George Washington
(1933), p. 315.
19
. George Washington,
Last Will and Testament,
reprinted in
The Papers of George Washington,
Dorothy Twohig, ed.,
Retirement Series
, vol. 4, p. 480. See Henry Wiencek’s
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
(2003) for a thorough and thoroughly engaging examination of Washington’s relationship to his slaves and slavery.
20
. Harold E. Dickson,
John Wesley Jarvis, American Painter, 1780–1840
(1949), p. 54.
21
. Rita Susswein Gottesman, “New York’s First Major Art Show” (1959), pp. 293–305.
22
.
Mercantile Advertiser
(New York), August 11, 1802.
23
. Gottesman, “Art Show” (1959), pp. 291–92.
CHAPTER 8:
Stuart Slouches Toward Philadelphia
1
. Rebora and Miles,
Gilbert Stuart
(2004), p. 76.
2
.
The World
(London), April 18, 1787, p. 3.
3
. J. D. Herbert,
Irish Varieties, for the last Fifty Years: Written from Recollections
(1836), p. 246.
4
. Stuart may have been bipolar; Dorinda Evans makes an intriguing case in “Gilbert Stuart and Manic Depression,”
American Art,
vol. 18, no 1 (spring 2004), pp. 10–31.
5
. Advertisement of Gilbert Stuart, Senior, in the
Newport Mercury
, November 16–24, 1766.
6
. The manuscript memoir of Benjamin Waterhouse, quoted at length in Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, pp. 165 ff.
7
. Waterhouse, quoted in Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, p. 166.
8
. Jane Stuart, “The Youth of Gilbert Stuart” (1877), p. 642. Jane, Stuart’s youngest daughter, born in 1812, proved to be
both his artistic heir (she painted copies of his works after his death) and his biographer, as she collected in three articles
various stories her father had recounted for the family. In addition to “Youth,” the other pieces in
Scribner’s Monthly
were “Anecdotes of Gilbert Stuart” (1877) and “The Stuart Portraits of Washington” (1876).
9
. Stuart confided in H. M. Jouett, whose 1816
Notebook
is reprinted in
Gilbert Stuart and His Pupils
by John Hill Morgan (1939), p. 87.
10
. Waterhouse, quoted in Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, p. 167.
11
. Gilbert Stuart to Benjamin West, undated (December 1777?), Miscellaneous Manuscripts, New-York Historical Society.
12
. Quoted in William T. Whitley,
Gilbert Stuart
(1932), pp. 27–28.
13
. Jouett,
Notebook
(1816), p. 85.
14
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, pp. 178–79.
15
. “Postscript Account of the Exhibition of Paintings, &c. at the Royal Academy,”
St. James’s Chronicle
, May 2, 1782, p. 4.
16
. Quoted in Mason,
Gilbert Stuart
(1879), p. 277.
17
. Whitley,
Gilbert Stuart
(1932), p. 39.
18
. As quoted by his daughter, Martha Babcock Amory, in her
Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley
(1882), p. 195.
19
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. 1, p. 193.
20
. Ibid., p. 191.
21
. The full stories of the children of Gilbert and Charlotte Coates Stuart— she gave birth to twelve—remain muddled. A number
of useful clues are to be found in the brief biography of their daughter Jane by Berit M. Hattendorf, “Newport’s First Woman
Portraitist” (1996), pp. 145–69.
22
. Jouett,
Notebook
(1816), p. 81.
23
. Herbert,
Irish Varieties
(1836), p. 232.
24
. Ibid., p. 248.
25
. Stuart to Henry Pickering, in “Conversation with Mr. Stuart the Painter,” Pickering Papers, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem,
Mass., 1817.
26
. Stuart family legend, in Rebora and Miles,
Gilbert Stuart
(2004), p. 101, fn 2.
27
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, p. 195.
28
. Mason,
Gilbert Stuart
(1879), p. 183.
29
. “American Painters,”
American Quarterly Review
, vol. XVII, no. 33 (March 1835), p. 177.
CHAPTER 9:
A Plurality of Portraits
1
. Sarah Livingston Jay, August 2, 1794, quoted in Whitley,
Gilbert Stuart
(1932), p. 92.
2
. Sarah Livingston Jay to John Jay, November 15, 1794, quoted in Whitley,
Gilbert Stuart
(1932), p. 92.
3
. Gilbert Stuart to Joseph Anthony, November 2, 1794, Massachusetts Historical Society.
4
. Henry Wansey,
An Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794
(1798), p. 57.
5
. Here and after, the primary source for information concerning the President’s House is Edward Lawler Jr., “The President’s
House in Philadelphia: The Rediscovery of a Lost Landmark” (2005).
6
. Jane Stuart, “The Stuart Portraits of Washington” (1876), p. 369.
7
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. 1, p. 197.