Redwood Catalog Entry: Alfred Hart's Portrait of Berkeley after Smibert, by Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee's entry on Alfred Hart's portrait of Berkeley blends a solid understanding of the historical aspects of this image with contemporary references that help place why the desire for this copy would have been especially appealing for the Redwood Library collection.

  

Alfred A. Hart, Reverend George Berkeley (after Smibert), ca. 1858, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 (76.2 x 63.5 cm)

Gift of Charles H. Olmsted

RLC.PA.033 (1858)

Painted in 1858, Alfred A. Hart’s Bishop George Berkeley is a testament to the continued importance of Berkley’s legacy to Newport as an economic and cultural center in Colonial America.  Born in Killerin, Ireland, writer and philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) gained considerable notoriety for his An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision (1709), A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713). By the 1720s—and fearful the England was falling to ruin—Berkeley had begun formulating plans to start a Christian community outside of England where he could establish a college.  He chose the colony of Bermuda due to its agreeable climate and abundance of resources; a royal charter was granted in 1725 and Berkeley and his entourage sailed in 1728.  Determined to create an area of study where he could educate the “savages” on Christianity, but lacking the necessary funding to begin, Berkeley and his shipmates—including the painter John Smibert—remained in Newport from 1729-1731. 

            Although Berkeley’s residence made Newport an intellectual and artistic center, it was Smibert’s painting that announced this forcefully and heralded the arrival of the fine arts to a colonial culture largely devoid of trained painters.  During Berkeley’s brief tenure he introduced the fine arts to America and helped found the Newport Philosophical Society, the forerunner of the Redwood Library. Alfred Hart’s painting, which used Smibert’s depiction of Berkeley from The Bermuda Group (1729-1731) as its model, demonstrates the painting’s popularity and importance even to a nineteenth century audience. Hart would have seen The Bermuda Group on display at the Yale College where it had been since 1808. More than just simply a record of Berkeley’s visit, the painting came to stand for the beginning of the fine arts in America and secured Newport’s importance as a colonial port.  

            Smibert’s reputation, both in the United States and England, was indebted to his travels with Berkeley and The Bermuda Group and the painting was revered as a singular contribution to the evolution of the arts in America.  As early as 1762, in his Anecdotes of Painting in England, Horace Walpole remarked on Smibert’s time with Berkeley’s “uncertain but amusing  scheme.”  By 1818, antiquarian Gulian Verplanck noted that while the painting was “not one of Smibert’s best” he presumed “it is the first painting of more than a single figure ever painted in the United States.” By 1855, just around the time that Hart executed his copy, the critic and historian Henry Tuckerman informed readers that “The visit of Smibert and associates Berkeley’s name with the dawn of art in America.” Berkeley’s importance to Newport’s legacy and The Bermuda Group’s stature as a painting would have resonated with audiences and made this a particularly fitting image for the library’s collection.           

Selected Bibliography

Annals of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, R.I.: Redwood Library, 1891.

Berkeley, George. The Works of George Berkeley Part One. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

Gaustad, Edwin S. “George Berkeley and New World Community.” Church History 48 (March 1979).

Tuckerman, Henry T. “Berkeley’s Visit to America.”  Home Journal 2 (January 1855).

Featured Student Work: Lucia Benton

Lucia Benton's entry on Chester Harding's Portrait of Daniel Webster is an excellent example of the work being done for the Redwood Cataloging Project:

Chester Harding, Daniel Webster, n.d [ca. 1845-52], oil on canvas, 30”x 25”

RLC.PA.146

          This full profile, bust length portrait of the distinguished American statesman Daniel Webster is one of at least seventeen likenesses that Chester Harding made of his lifelong friend.  Harding actively pursued prominent figures to paint, recognizing their value to his reputation, and this is likely how the two met. In 1827, after returning from a three-year painting trip to England, Harding was first commissioned to paint Webster’s wife, Grace Fletcher Webster. The following year, then-Senator Webster sat for him as well, the first of many portraits Harding made of him. In spite of their very different backgrounds, they were often included in the same social circles in Boston, and their daughters were devoted friends. Harding much admired Webster, referring to him often in his letters, as well as his memoir, and was proud of these connections.

          Daniel Webster began his political career in 1813 when, as a young attorney, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in his native New Hampshire. He later resettled in Boston, and was a delegate at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1821. He again served in the United States House, this time representing Massachusetts, a post he held until 1827, when he became a United States Senator. He was initially elected as a Federalist, but eventually joined the Whig Party, which, with members from both the North and the South, believed in the primacy of Congress over the Presidency, as well as a policy of modernization that included rapid economic and industrial growth, improvement of infrastructure, and universal public education. As a Whig, Webster was twice Secretary of State (1841-1843 and 1850-1852), and in 1852, was the party’s failed Presidential candidate, likely a result of his unfaltering support of compromise in the slave issue.

“Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”

          Daniel Webster’s legacy is multifaceted, but the great orator is best remembered for his passionate fight to preserve the Union in the fractious years leading up to the Civil War. He fervently believed that, “It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad.” He was an outspoken anti-abolitionist, not for a personal stance on the issue of slavery, but rather for his belief that the disruptions of the anti-abolitionists jeopardized the unity and stability of the nation. Despite the political peril, he was resolute in his support of compromise, and the gradual removal of slavery, ardently opposing the idea of secession. Daniel Webster died in 1852, just as the Whig Party was beginning to disintegrate over the issue of the expansion of slavery to the territories, but his remarkable eloquence in argument immortalizes him as one of the greatest orators in United States history.

          Though they often encountered each other socially, Webster apparently only sat for Harding on two occasions. This full profile portrait is most likely made from an early daguerreotype image taken before 1845 by Southworth and Hawes of Boston from which the artist made many replicas over a course of years. When artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse brought the daguerreotype process to the United States in 1839, many felt that the technology would be the end of portrait painting.  Many artists, however, including Harding, used it to their advantage as it allowed them to render likenesses from afar, eliminated the need for long sittings, and made it possible to paint memorial portraits of the deceased. Painted portraits of prominent politicians were being commissioned at unprecedented rates for civic buildings and private homes alike in the rapidly growing nation, and photography allowed artists to meet that great demand.

          Though this painting was taken from a two-dimensional photograph, it is in many regards a very human rendering of Webster. The painting shows the full development of Harding’s talent, with realistic three-dimensional rendering. In full, left profile, his visible eye appears to gaze at nothing, suggesting an inwardly focused contemplation. There is a pensive quality to the portrait, though it is unclear whether this was the artist’s intent or merely a matter of the stillness required for the long exposure times for daguerreotype images.  Webster’s body is rendered comfortably, the proportions correct and with none of the stiffness seen in other Harding portrayals of Webster, including the ones taken from live sittings. It is known that Harding was preoccupied with achieving a true likeness in the face, with body, clothes, and hands being secondary in importance, and very often significantly less developed. Here, the whole person hangs together in a naturalistic way. Working from the daguerreotype may have allowed Harding the luxury of giving equal time to his sitter’s body.

          The undated painting had to have been made after the introduction of daguerreotype in 1839. Based on its similarity to several dated paintings Harding made from the same daguerreotype, it was likely painted between 1845 and 1852. Daniel Webster was in the final stretch of his distinguished life, at the center of what was perhaps the most tumultuous era of United States history. This sensitive and contemplative portrait captures the seriousness of that moment when Webster’s beloved nation stood at the brink of the ultimate fracture that turned into the Civil War.  

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brigham, David R, Laura K. Mills, and Philip A. Klausmeyer. Early American Paintings in the Worcester Art Museum. Online Catalogue. Worcester, MA: Worcester Museum of Art, ____.

Harding, Chester. My Egotistigraphy. ed. by his daughter, Margaret E. White, Cambridge, Mass.: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1866.

Hart, Charles Henry. “Life Portraits of Daniel Webster.” McClure’s Magazine 9 (1897).

Lipton, Leah. A Truthful Likeness: Chester Harding and His Portraits. Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 1985.

Lipton, Leah. “Chester Harding and the Life Portrait of Daniel Boone.” American Art Journal 16, no.3 (1984), 4-19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1594392

McDonough, John, and Nan Thompson Ernst and Manuscript Division staff, Library of Congress. Daniel Webster: A Register of his Papers in the Library of Congress. Washington: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, 1997. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss.ms000013

Otto, John C. Selections from the American Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum.  Springfield, MA: The Quadrangle, 1999.

Webster, Daniel.  “Our Country” The Green Mountain Gem; a Monthly Journal of Literature, Science, and the Arts 6, no.94 (1848). Retrieved November 27, 2010, from American Periodicals Series Online. (Document ID: 356104831).

Webster, Daniel and Edward Everett. The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume III. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851.