American Men of Mind Part 5

Copley was a laborious and painstaking craftsman, setting down what he saw upon canvas with uncompromising sincerity. He worked very slowly and many stories are told of how he tried the patience of his sitters.

The result was a series of portraits which preserve the very spirit of the age--serious, self-reliant and capable, pompous and lacking humor.

His later work has an atmosphere and repose which his early work lacks, but it is less important to America. His early portraits, which hang on the walls of so many Boston homes, and which Oliver Wendell Holmes called the t.i.tles of n.o.bility of the old Boston families, are priceless doc.u.ments of history.

Copley was an artist from choice rather than necessity; he followed painting because it a.s.sured him a good livelihood, and he was a patient and painstaking craftsman. His life was serene and happy; he was without the tribulations, as he seems to have been without the enthusiasms of the great artist. Not so with his most famous contemporary, Benjamin West, whose life was filled to overflowing with the contrast and picturesqueness which Copley's lacked.

West was born in 1738 at a little Pennsylvania frontier settlement. His parents were Quakers, and to the rigor and simplicity of frontier life were added those of that sect. But even these handicaps could not turn the boy aside from his vocation, for he was a born painter, if there ever was one. At the age of six he tried to draw, with red and black ink, a likeness of a baby he had been set to watch; a year later, a party of friendly Indians, amused by some sketches of birds and leaves he showed them, taught him how to prepare the red and yellow colors which they used on their ornaments. His mother furnished some indigo, brushes were secured by clipping the family cat--no doubt greatly to its disgust--and with these crude materials he set to work.

His success won him the present of a box of paints from a relative in Philadelphia. With that treasure the boy lived and slept, and his mother, finally discovering that he was running away from school, found him in the garret with a picture before him which she refused to let him finish lest he should spoil it. That painting was preserved to be exhibited sixty-six years later.

The boy's talent was so evident, and his determination to be a painter so fixed, that his parents finally overcame their scruples against an occupation which they considered vain and useless, and sent him to Philadelphia. There he lived as frugally as possible, saving his money for a trip to Italy, and finally, at the age of twenty-two, set sail for Europe.

His success there was immediate. He gained friends in the most influential circles, spent three years in study in Italy, and going to London in 1764, received so many commissions that he decided to live there permanently. He wrote home for his father to join him, and to bring with him a Miss Shewell, to whom West was betrothed. He also wrote to the young lady, stating that his father would sail at a certain time, and asking her to join him. The letter fell into the hands of Miss Shewell's brother, who objected to West for some reason, and who promptly locked the girl in her room. Three friends of West's concluded that this outrage upon true love was not to be endured, smuggled a rope-ladder to her, and got her out of the house and safely on board the vessel. These three friends were Benjamin Franklin, Francis Hopkinson and William White, the latter the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, and the exploit was one which they were always proud to remember. Miss Shewell reached London safely and the lovers were happily married.

Meanwhile West's success had been given a sudden impetus by his introduction to King George III. The two men became lifelong friends, and the King gave him commission after commission, culminating in a command to decorate the Royal Chapel at Windsor. His first reverse came when the King's mind began to fail. His commissions were cancelled and his pensions stopped. He was deposed from the Presidency of the Royal Academy, which he had founded, and was for a time in needy circ.u.mstances; but the tide soon turned, and his last years were marked by the production of a number of great paintings. He died at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with splendid ceremonies. So ended one of the most remarkable careers in history.

West was, perhaps, more notable as a man than as an artist, for his fame as a painter has steadily declined. His greatest service to art was the example he set of painting historical groups in the costume of the period instead of in the vestments of the early Romans, as had been the custom. This innovation was made by him in his picture of the death of General Wolfe, and created no little disturbance. His friends, including Reynolds, protested against such a desecration of tradition; even the King questioned him, and West replied that the painter should be bound by truth as well as the historian, and to represent a group of English soldiers in the year 1758 as dressed in cla.s.sic costume was absurd.

After the picture was completed, Reynolds was the first to declare that West had won, and that his picture would occasion a revolution in art--as, indeed, it did.

It is difficult to understand the habit of thought which insisted on clothing great men in garments they could never by any possibility have worn, yet it persisted until a comparatively late day. The most famous example in this country is Greenough's statue of Was.h.i.+ngton, just outside the Capitol. One looks at it with a certain sense of shock, for the Father of His Country is sitting half-naked, in a great arm chair, with some drapery over his legs, and a fold hanging over one shoulder.

We shall have occasion in the next chapter to speak of it and of its maker.

Another of West's services to art was the wholehearted way in which he extended a helping hand to any who needed it. He was always willing to give such instruction as he could, and among his pupils were at least four men who added not a little to American art--Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully.

Peale was born in Maryland in 1741, and was, among other things, a saddler, a coach-maker, a clock-maker and a silversmith. He finally decided to add painting to his other accomplishments, so he secured some painting materials and a book of instructions and set to work. In 1770, a number of gentlemen of Annapolis furnished him with enough money to go to England, a loan which he promised to repay with pictures upon his return. West received him kindly, and when Peale's money gave out, as it soon did, welcomed him into his own house. Peale remained in London for four years, returning to America in time to join Was.h.i.+ngton as a captain of volunteers, and to take part in the battles of Trenton and Germantown.

After the war he continued painting, but, in 1801, his mind, always alert for new experiences, was led away in a strange direction. The bones of a mammoth were discovered in Ulster County, New York, and Peale secured possession of them, had them taken to Philadelphia, and started a museum. It rapidly increased in size, for all sorts of curiosities poured in upon him, and he began a series of lectures on natural history, which, whether learned or not, proved so interesting that large and distinguished audiences gathered to hear him. In 1805, he founded the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest and most flouris.h.i.+ng inst.i.tution of the kind in the country. He lived to a hale old age, never having known sickness, and dying as the result of incautious exposure. Like West, his life is more interesting than his work, for while he painted fairly good portraits, they were the work rather of a skilled craftsman than of an artist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUART]

The second of West's pupils whom we have mentioned, Gilbert Stuart, was by far the greatest of the earlier artists. He was born near Newport, R.

I., in 1755, his father being a Jacobite refugee from Scotland. He began to paint at an early age, worked faithfully at drawing, and finally, at the age of nineteen, began portrait painting in earnest. One of his first pictures was a striking example of a remarkable characteristic, the power of visual memory, which he retained through his whole life.

His grandmother had died five or six years before, but he painted a portrait of her, producing so striking a likeness that it immediately brought him orders for others. But Newport had grown distasteful to him, and in 1775, he started for London.

How he got there is not certainly known, but get there he did, without money or friends, or much hope of making either, and for three years lived a precarious life, earning a little money, borrowing what he could, twice imprisoned for debt, and with it all so gay and brilliant and talented that those he wronged most loved him most. Finally, he was introduced to Benjamin West, and found in him an invaluable friend and patron. For nearly four years, Stuart worked as West's student and a.s.sistant, steadily improving in drawing, developing a technique of astonis.h.i.+ng merit, and, more than that, one that was all his own.

His portraits soon attracted attention, and at the end of a few years, he was earning a large income. But he squandered it so recklessly that he was finally forced to flee to Ireland to escape his creditors.

They pursued him, threw him into prison, and the legend is that he painted most of the Irish aristocracy in his cell in the Dublin jail.

At last, in 1792, he returned to America, animated by a desire to paint a portrait of Was.h.i.+ngton. Arrangements for a sitting were made, but it is related that Stuart, although he had painted many famous men and was at ease in most society, found himself strangely embarra.s.sed in Was.h.i.+ngton's presence. The President was kindly and courteous, but the portrait was a failure. He tried again, and produced the portrait which remains to this day the accepted likeness of the First American. You will find it as the frontispiece to "Men of Action," and it is worth examining closely, for it is an example of art rarely surpa.s.sed, as well as a remarkable portrait of our most remarkable citizen.

Gilbert Stuart still holds his place among the greatest of American portrait painters. His heads, painted simply and without artifice, and yet with high imagination, are unsurpa.s.sed; they possess insight, they accomplish that greatest of all tasks, the delineation of character.

Stuart's portraits--as every portrait must, to be truly great--show not only how his sitters looked but _what they were_. Art can accomplish no more than that.

The anecdotes which are told of him are innumerable, and most of them have to do with his hot temper, which grew hotter and hotter as his years increased and he became more and more a public character. One day, a loving husband, whose wife Stuart had put on canvas in an unusually uncompromising way, complained that the portrait did not do her justice.

"What an infernal business is this of a portrait painter," Stuart cried, at last, his patience giving way. "You bring him a potato and expect him to paint you a peach!"

But look at his portrait at the beginning of this chapter, and you will see a witty and kindly old gentleman, as well as an irascible one.

John Trumbull was a student of West's at the same time that Stuart was.

He was a year younger, and was a son of that Jonathan Trumbull, afterwards governor of Connecticut, whose t.i.tle of Brother Jonathan, given him by Was.h.i.+ngton, became afterwards a sort of national nickname.

He was an infant prodigy, graduating from Harvard at an age when most boys were entering, and afterwards going to Boston to take lessons from Copley. The outbreak of the Revolution stopped his studies; he enlisted in the army, won rapid promotion, and finally resigned in a huff because he thought his commission as colonel incorrectly dated.

In 1780, he sailed for France, on his way to London, met Benjamin Franklin in Paris and from him secured a letter of introduction to Benjamin West, who welcomed him with his unfailing cordiality; but he had scarcely commenced his studies when he was arrested and thrown into prison. The reason was the arrest and execution at New York of Major Andre, who was captured with Benedict Arnold's treasonable correspondence hidden in his boot, and who was hanged as a spy. Knowing that Trumbull had been an officer in the American army, and anxious to avenge Andre's death, the King ordered his arrest, but West interceded for him and secured his release several weeks later.

Warned that England was unsafe for him, Trumbull returned to America and remained there until after the close of the Revolution. The beginning of 1784 saw him again in London, at work on his two famous paintings, "The Battle of Bunker Hill" and "The Death of General Montgomery," and from that time until his death he was occupied almost exclusively with the painting of pictures ill.u.s.trating events in American history--"The Surrender of Cornwallis," "The Battle of Princeton," "The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton," to mention only three. In 1816 he received a commission to paint four of the eight commemorative pictures in the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton, and completed the last one eight years later, this being his last important work.

Trumbull is in no respect to be compared with Gilbert Stuart, but his work was done with a painstaking accuracy which makes it valuable as a historical doc.u.ment. For the personages of his pictures he painted a great number of miniatures from life, which, in many cases, are the only surviving presentments of some of the most prominent men of the time.

After Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully was by far the greatest of the men who studied in West's studio. Stuart aside, there was no American painter of the day to equal him. He was born in England in 1783, but was brought to this country by his parents at the age of nine. The Sullys were actors of some talent and secured an engagement at Charleston, South Carolina, and there the boy was placed first in school, and then in the office of an insurance broker. He spent so much time making sketches that his employer decided he was destined for art and not for business, and secured another clerk.

Young Sully thoroughly agreed with this and started out to be an artist.

He had no money, nor means of earning any, but he managed to secure some desultory instruction, and this, added to his native talent, enabled him to begin to paint portraits for which uncritical persons were willing to pay. But it was a hard road, and none was more conscious of his deficiencies than himself. He knew that he needed training, and finally started for England with a purse of four hundred dollars in his pocket, which had been subscribed by friends, who were each to be repaid by a copy of an old master.

Arrived at London, Sully at once got himself introduced to Benjamin West, who received him "like a father," admitted him to his studio, and aided him in many ways. He remained there, painting by day, drawing by night, studying anatomy in every spare moment, and living on bread and potatoes and water in order to make his money last as long as possible.

At the end of nine months it was gone, and he was forced to return to America.

But those nine months of study had given him just what he needed, and his talent soon gained recognition. Orders poured in upon him at good prices; and though his prosperity afterwards dwindled somewhat, he never again experienced the pangs of poverty. He made Philadelphia his home, and for nearly half a century occupied a house on Chestnut Street which had been built for him by Stephen Girard. His work is in every way worthy of respect--firm and serious and rich with a warm and mellow color.

Benjamin West had many other pupils--indeed, his studio was a sort of incubator for American artists--but none of them won any permanent fame.

One, Was.h.i.+ngton Allston, achieved considerable contemporary reputation, but it seems to have resulted more from his own winning personality than from his work. He possessed a charm which fairly dazzled all who met him, notably Coleridge and Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. His smaller canva.s.ses, graceful figures or heads, to which he attached little importance, are more admired to-day than his more ambitious ones.

Another pupil was John Vanderlyn, of Dutch stock, as his name shows, a protege of Aaron Burr, and the painter of the best known portrait of his daughter, Theodosia, as well as of Burr himself. When Burr, an outcast in fortune and men's eyes, fled to Paris, Vanderlyn, who had made some reputation there, was able to repay, to some extent, the kindness which Burr had shown him. His work shows care and serious thought, but his last years were embittered by the indifference of the public, and he died in want.

That versatile genius and hale old man, Charles Willson Peale, to whom we have already referred, had many children, and he christened them with most distinguished names, so that, in the end, he could boast himself the father of Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and t.i.tian. Alas that the name does not make the man! Only one of them, Rembrandt, achieved any distinction in art, and that but a faint and far-off reflection of the master whose name he bore.

Like his father, he was interested in many things besides his art; he conducted a museum at Baltimore, introduced illuminating gas there, wrote voluminous memoirs, and, living until 1860, became a sort of dean of the profession. An example of his work will be found in "Men of Action," the likeness of Thomas Jefferson given there being a reproduction from a portrait painted by him. His portraits are not held in high estimation at the present day, for, while correct enough in drawing, they show little insight. We have come to demand something more than mechanical skill, and that "something more," which makes the artist and divides him from the artisan, is exactly what Rembrandt Peale did not possess.

It is interesting, too, to note that one of the most promising painters of the time was S. F. B. Morse. In the Yale School of Fine Arts hangs a portrait of Mrs. De Forest, and in the New York City Hall one of Lafayette, both of them from his brush, and both not unworthy the best traditions of American art. But a chance conversation about electricity turned his thoughts in that direction, and he abandoned painting for invention--the result being the electric telegraph. We shall speak of him further in the chapter on inventors.

The pa.s.sing of Was.h.i.+ngton Allston and his group marked the end of Benjamin West's influence, and, in a way, of English influence, on American painting. It marked, too, a lapse in interest, for it was a long time before it found for itself an adequate mode of expression.

There are, however, two or three men of the period whom we must mention, not so much because of their achievements, which had little significance, as because of their remarkable and inspiring lives.

Chester Harding, reared on the New York frontier, a typical back-woodsman, by turns a peddler, a tavern-keeper, and house-painter, and a failure at all of them, got so deeply in debt that he ran away to Pittsburgh to escape his creditors, and there, to his amazement, one day saw an itinerant painter painting a portrait. Before that, he had secured work of some sort, and his wife had joined him. Filled with admiration for the artist's work, he procured a board and some paint, and sat down to paint a portrait of his wife. He actually did produce a likeness, and, delighted at the result, practiced a while longer, and then, proceeding to Paris, Kentucky--perhaps through some a.s.sociation of the name with the great art centre of Europe--boldly announced himself as a portrait painter, and got about a hundred people to pay him twenty-five dollars apiece to paint them.

He spent some time at Cincinnati, and got as far west as St. Louis, where he journeyed nearly a hundred miles to find Daniel Boone living in his log cabin on his Missouri land, and painted the portrait of that old pioneer which is reproduced in "Men of Action." Boone was at that time ninety years of age, and Harding found him living almost alone, roasting a piece of venison on the end of his ramrod, as had been his custom all his life.

One of the most surprising things in the history of American art is the facility with which men of all trades turned to portrait painting, apparently as a last resort, and managed to make a living at it. During the first half of the last century, the country seems to have been overrun with wandering portrait painters, whose only equipment for the art was some paint and a bundle of brushes. They had, for the most part, no training, and that anyone, in a time when money was scarce and hardly earned, should have paid it out for the wretched daubs these men produced is a great mystery. But they did pay it out, and, as we have seen, Harding earned no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in a comparatively short time.

With such of this money as he had been able to save, he went to Philadelphia and spent two months in study there; then he returned to his old home, and astonished his neighbors by paying his debts. He astonished them still more when they found he was making money by painting portraits, for which he now charged forty dollars each, and his aged grandfather felt obliged to protest.

"Chester," he said, having called him aside so that none could overhear, "I want to speak to you about your present mode of life. I think it no better than swindling to charge forty dollars for one of those effigies.

Now I want you to give up this way of living and settle down on a farm and become a respectable man."

However excellent this advice may have been, Chester had gone too far to heed it. He had decided to go to England, but he stayed in America long enough to earn money to buy a farm for his parents and to settle his own family at Northampton. This duty accomplished, he set sail for London, and his success there was immediate, due as much to his remarkable personality as to his work. He returned to America in 1826, and spent the rest of his life here, painting most of the political leaders of the country. It has been said of his portraits that his heads are as solid as iron and his coats as uncompromising as tin, while his faces s.h.i.+ne like burnished platters.