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Early Portraits
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American folk portraiture can be traced to Old World predecessors and sources of inspiration. Many artists, especially in the first years of settlement, had been at least introduced to the principles or “schools” of art that flourished in Europe during and following the Renaissance. Their work influenced the American artists who followed them and adapted their styles as best they could. It is to these European immigrants that we look to understand the roots of folk painting in America.
In the settlements of the East Coast, portraiture was the most important form of painting during the Colonial period. As many of the artists were English immigrants, their styles of painting reflect the traditions in vogue in England at the time of their emigration. One style, first seen in America in the late seventeenth century, was Elizabethan in feeling with mannerist overtones. Rather than a true portrait, the painting was idealized, and was usually not representative of the personality of the sitter. Artists generally focused upon that which they considered most important in a portrait: the material wealth of the subjects as exemplified by their clothing and accessories. The backgrounds were simplified and stylized, and the painting had a linear, two-dimensional feeling.
A second style of portraiture was introduced in the beginning of the eighteenth century by new waves of immigrant English painters. These artists were influenced by the High Renaissance concepts of painting that had been brought to England by Italian and Dutch artists traveling and fulfilling commissions there in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Artists working in this mode attempted to accurately re-create realistic spatial relationships within their compositions, and so the works have a more three-dimensional quality. In these paintings, more attention is paid to trying to depict a realistic likeness of the sitter and to capturing something of the subject's personality. Frequently, however, the artists relied on English mezzotint engravings for their background settings, poses, and accessories. Most popular were the engravings made from the portraits painted by Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, court painter from the reign of Charles II to that of George I who was painting to please the English nobility and persons of fashion. In eighteenth-century America, the artists were pleasing a nobility of another kind: those who had become wealthy in trade and commerce or were the political or social leaders of their colony and had commissioned portraits as symbols of their status in the community. Paintings of this type are most often seen portraying the well-to-do Dutch of the Hudson River Valley in New York as well as the Colonial aristocracy in Virginia, Boston, and New York City.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many originally self-taught folk painters developed a competence that earned them national and international reputations. John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, and Benjamin West were among the artists who began their careers without fully developed skills and whose techniques developed from personal experimentation. In time, formal training in varying degrees changed their styles to the point that the majority of their paintings cannot be considered folk art. However, thousands of folk painters lacked the luxury of training afforded men like Copley and West and, because of economic, cultural, and social considerations they failed to attain the impressive stature of these masters. Though much of their work lacks technical competence, it does demonstrate a power of observation, a sense of design, and a wide range of imaginative vision. It was also widely accepted and valued by the country folk who commissioned it.
By the late eighteenth century, portraits were desired by and available to a much greater audience than in the Colonial period. The middle class that emerged after the Revolution had both the means to hire an artist and the need to show that they were worthy of having their likenesses taken and therefore worthy of being remembered by future generations. In the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, there were countless artists who earned their living by satisfying that need.
Many of these portraitists emerged from the craft tradition and began or often supplemented their portrait careers by doing sign, carriage, house, decorative, and general “fancy” painting. These were primarily self-taught artists who found their own solutions to the problems of anatomy, composition, and color. Others had rudimentary training in the studios of more established painters, some of whom had had little formal instruction themselves. No doubt these artists crossed each other’s paths enough to be influenced by both earlier and contemporary painters.
While some painters lived in cities that were large and wealthy enough to support their careers, or combined portrait painting with different forms of work, others had a more itinerant lifestyle, traveling from town to town in search of commissions. Many relied on friends and relatives or on the good work for previous clients to recommend them to new areas that might prove fruitful. Usually, an artist arriving in town would place an advertisement in the local paper advising the populace of his or her availability to undertake portrait commissions. Frequently, entire members of a family would be painted by an artist during his stay and then he would move on to another town where he would paint a different branch of the family.
Because folk artists often painted portraits that are very similar (Ammi Phillips, for example, painted a number of children in poses and costumes almost identical to Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog in the museum’s collection), it was once believed that itinerant artists would spend the winters painting “stock” portraits of headless bodies. They would then, it was said, travel from town to town during the summer months, offering patrons their choice of body to which a head would be added. Research into the careers of these artists, however, has proved that this was not how they worked.
What folk portraitists such as Phillips did do was to keep in mind themes and motifs upon which they could call as needed. After all, the more portraits they completed the more they could earn, so it was incumbent upon them to finish paintings as quickly as possible. These stock methods of solving problems such as costumes, backgrounds, poses, and anatomy were used frequently as timesaving devices. This was also a reasonably sure way of pleasing clients, who could be shown recently completed commissions and be assured of what they would be getting. Because most folk paintings are unsigned, such stylistic devices provide clues for attributing works to specific artists.
Folk painters, however, sometimes evolved in their style of painting or were capable of painting in more than one style. Phillips, for example, who painted in the border areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, has been shown to have painted in three completely different styles during his long career. William Matthew Prior, who painted with a number of relatives, including Sturtevant J. Hamblin and George Hartwell, in his well-known “Painting Garret” in Boston, adapted his technique to the potential sitter’s financial means: a flat likeness “without shade” could be had for about one dollar; for more affluent subjects, he would provide a realistic portrait at a price as high as twenty-five dollars.
By 1840, the portrait artists were beginning to lose the battle for commissions to takers of daguerreotypes, introduced to America from France in 1839 by the painter Samuel F.B. Morse, better known today as the inventor of the telegraph. Daguerreotypes were cheaper and faster to produce than painted portraits, and their images were more realistic. Many artists found they simply could not compete and had to find other means of employment, including learning the new technology themselves and taking to the road as itinerant photographers. Others stayed in business for a while by offering what the photographs could not—color, large size, and the ability to include family members who were not present, including those who were deceased. And many artists found a way to combine painting and photography in their portraits, either by painting over photographs or copying photographic images onto a large canvas. In general, however, both the quality and the artistic merit of folk portraits painted after mid-century declined, and the artists were forced to find new avenues for artistic expression as well as for making a living.
American folk portraiture can be traced to Old World predecessors and sources of inspiration. Many artists, especially in the first years of settlement, had been at least introduced to the principles or “schools” of art that flourished in Europe during and following the Renaissance. Their work influenced the American artists who followed them and adapted their styles as best they could. It is to these European immigrants that we look to understand the roots of folk painting in America.
In the settlements of the East Coast, portraiture was the most important form of painting during the Colonial period. As many of the artists were English immigrants, their styles of painting reflect the traditions in vogue in England at the time of their emigration. One style, first seen in America in the late seventeenth century, was Elizabethan in feeling with mannerist overtones. Rather than a true portrait, the painting was idealized, and was usually not representative of the personality of the sitter. Artists generally focused upon that which they considered most important in a portrait: the material wealth of the subjects as exemplified by their clothing and accessories. The backgrounds were simplified and stylized, and the painting had a linear, two-dimensional feeling.
A second style of portraiture was introduced in the beginning of the eighteenth century by new waves of immigrant English painters. These artists were influenced by the High Renaissance concepts of painting that had been brought to England by Italian and Dutch artists traveling and fulfilling commissions there in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Artists working in this mode attempted to accurately re-create realistic spatial relationships within their compositions, and so the works have a more three-dimensional quality. In these paintings, more attention is paid to trying to depict a realistic likeness of the sitter and to capturing something of the subject's personality. Frequently, however, the artists relied on English mezzotint engravings for their background settings, poses, and accessories. Most popular were the engravings made from the portraits painted by Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, court painter from the reign of Charles II to that of George I who was painting to please the English nobility and persons of fashion. In eighteenth-century America, the artists were pleasing a nobility of another kind: those who had become wealthy in trade and commerce or were the political or social leaders of their colony and had commissioned portraits as symbols of their status in the community. Paintings of this type are most often seen portraying the well-to-do Dutch of the Hudson River Valley in New York as well as the Colonial aristocracy in Virginia, Boston, and New York City.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many originally self-taught folk painters developed a competence that earned them national and international reputations. John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, and Benjamin West were among the artists who began their careers without fully developed skills and whose techniques developed from personal experimentation. In time, formal training in varying degrees changed their styles to the point that the majority of their paintings cannot be considered folk art. However, thousands of folk painters lacked the luxury of training afforded men like Copley and West and, because of economic, cultural, and social considerations they failed to attain the impressive stature of these masters. Though much of their work lacks technical competence, it does demonstrate a power of observation, a sense of design, and a wide range of imaginative vision. It was also widely accepted and valued by the country folk who commissioned it.
By the late eighteenth century, portraits were desired by and available to a much greater audience than in the Colonial period. The middle class that emerged after the Revolution had both the means to hire an artist and the need to show that they were worthy of having their likenesses taken and therefore worthy of being remembered by future generations. In the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, there were countless artists who earned their living by satisfying that need.
Many of these portraitists emerged from the craft tradition and began or often supplemented their portrait careers by doing sign, carriage, house, decorative, and general “fancy” painting. These were primarily self-taught artists who found their own solutions to the problems of anatomy, composition, and color. Others had rudimentary training in the studios of more established painters, some of whom had had little formal instruction themselves. No doubt these artists crossed each other’s paths enough to be influenced by both earlier and contemporary painters.
While some painters lived in cities that were large and wealthy enough to support their careers, or combined portrait painting with different forms of work, others had a more itinerant lifestyle, traveling from town to town in search of commissions. Many relied on friends and relatives or on the good work for previous clients to recommend them to new areas that might prove fruitful. Usually, an artist arriving in town would place an advertisement in the local paper advising the populace of his or her availability to undertake portrait commissions. Frequently, entire members of a family would be painted by an artist during his stay and then he would move on to another town where he would paint a different branch of the family.
Because folk artists often painted portraits that are very similar (Ammi Phillips, for example, painted a number of children in poses and costumes almost identical to Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog in the museum’s collection), it was once believed that itinerant artists would spend the winters painting “stock” portraits of headless bodies. They would then, it was said, travel from town to town during the summer months, offering patrons their choice of body to which a head would be added. Research into the careers of these artists, however, has proved that this was not how they worked.
What folk portraitists such as Phillips did do was to keep in mind themes and motifs upon which they could call as needed. After all, the more portraits they completed the more they could earn, so it was incumbent upon them to finish paintings as quickly as possible. These stock methods of solving problems such as costumes, backgrounds, poses, and anatomy were used frequently as timesaving devices. This was also a reasonably sure way of pleasing clients, who could be shown recently completed commissions and be assured of what they would be getting. Because most folk paintings are unsigned, such stylistic devices provide clues for attributing works to specific artists.
Folk painters, however, sometimes evolved in their style of painting or were capable of painting in more than one style. Phillips, for example, who painted in the border areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, has been shown to have painted in three completely different styles during his long career. William Matthew Prior, who painted with a number of relatives, including Sturtevant J. Hamblin and George Hartwell, in his well-known “Painting Garret” in Boston, adapted his technique to the potential sitter’s financial means: a flat likeness “without shade” could be had for about one dollar; for more affluent subjects, he would provide a realistic portrait at a price as high as twenty-five dollars.
By 1840, the portrait artists were beginning to lose the battle for commissions to takers of daguerreotypes, introduced to America from France in 1839 by the painter Samuel F.B. Morse, better known today as the inventor of the telegraph. Daguerreotypes were cheaper and faster to produce than painted portraits, and their images were more realistic. Many artists found they simply could not compete and had to find other means of employment, including learning the new technology themselves and taking to the road as itinerant photographers. Others stayed in business for a while by offering what the photographs could not—color, large size, and the ability to include family members who were not present, including those who were deceased. And many artists found a way to combine painting and photography in their portraits, either by painting over photographs or copying photographic images onto a large canvas. In general, however, both the quality and the artistic merit of folk portraits painted after mid-century declined, and the artists were forced to find new avenues for artistic expression as well as for making a living.