Gilbert Stuart

my most visited post; Dolly Madison is ushered to the White House door

2012-01-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

“Stuart is all the rage…”

Dolly, widowed at age 25 with two children upon the sudden death of her first husband from the yellow fever epidemic which swept through the new capital of the United States, met 38 yr old James Madison in Philadelphia in 1794 after having moved there to be with her Quaker family. They were married soon afterwards.

Her parents were strict members of the “Society of Friends”. The young Dolly: “… was wondrously fair. Her mother, who would not permit her to wear jewels, taught her to take care of her complexion. She was sent to school with long gloves on her hands and arms, a close sunbonnet and a white linen mask on her face; in fact it is plain to see that in many ways great attention was bestowed upon the outward as well as the inward graces of the young Friend.” (Life and Letters of Dolly Madison by A. C. Clark, W F Roberts Co, Washington DC 1914; p 13, a quote by Harriet T. Upton.) Just before meeting with Madison; she wrote her friend Mrs. Lee, saying, “Dear friend, thou must come to me. Aaron Burr says that the ‘great little Madison’ has asked to be brought to see me this evening.” She was dressed in a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape. In this first interview, at her own house, she captured the heart of the recluse book-worm, Madison… always thought to be an irreclaimable old bachelor.” (Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison by Dolley Madison, Lucia Beverly Cutts, Houghton, Mifflin &Co. Boston and NY, 1887, p 15)

Does the General not exist?

2012-01-09T15:25:00.001-08:00

This has NEVER happened to me before. My sleuthing has left me empty handed!!

A Gilbert Stuart painting of a male, in a fine red uniform, is up for auction at Christie's this coming January 26. If one is willing to shed a minimum of $25,000. one may offer up a bid; the price is determined to be somewhere between $25,000. to $35,000. This dashing warrior is named General R. Grenville.

But I can NOT find "General R. Grenville 1745-1823" anywhere. He is not listed in any known source (to me) of Stuart paintings including of course the Lawrence Park volumes and George Mason. I can not find him anywhere on the internet. What?? A General that can not be found...on the internet? How possible is that? Usually any individual that was painted by Stuart had mounds of money and connections, and should be able to be found!

Is there no frame on the canvas? No date is provided for when the portrait was done, nor location. All rather odd.

If any of my readers has some information, please send it on over. !! If you plan to submit an offer on this portrait, which seems to have in fact all the hallmarks of a Stuart, I would check with the experts first. The man has a fancy name, but may not be who one thinks he is. !! And certainly there are/were expert copiers out there, willing to pass off a fake Stuart, I would imagine. Why does the history of the painting begin c. 1946? And what also raises my suspicion is that there are no other 'Grenvilles' painted by the master. Yes my Meeker was not listed by Park or Mason, but there was a Stuart painting of William Meeker listed in Park. That, in addition to my Provenance (click here for the history of ownership of the Meeker painting) from day one (Samuel gifted his portrait to his twin sister Phoebe on their 40 birthday--well ok the birthday part is my theory), is ample proof that Samuel is the genuine thing. Also in the above portrait, there is an inscription in the lower left naming the sitter. That was not usual for Stuart to do, although perhaps someone else painted in the inscription at a later date.

There is a Providence of 'General R. Grenville 1745-1823' , but what is left out is significant. This information is courtesy of Christie's. As is the image of the portrait of the general above.

Provenance (quoted directly from Christie's)
Captain Richard Neville, Butleigh Court, Glastonbury; Christie's, London, 5 April 1946 lot 58 (380 gns. to Polak).with Leggatt Brothers, London, 1953, where purchased byDaniel H. Farr.Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 24 November 1965, lot 74 (£1400 to J. Maas).Vincent Price.with Sears, Roebuck and Co., Chicago, 1966, from whom purchased by the present owners. PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. AND MRS. FRANCIS D. FOWLER

A ‘1% er’ brings art, and a piece from our maestro, to, of all places, Arkansas!

2011-12-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Dr. William Smith by Gilbert Stuart Philadelphia,1800

The heiress daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton is bringing art to Middle America by opening a new museum featuring an immense collection of American art. The 217,000-square-foot Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is located in the small town of Bentonville in northwest Arkansas, which is the headquarters of Wal-Mart. Alice Walton, the 62-year-old billionaire heiress splits her time between Bentonville and her Texas ranch.

I saw a blurb on the opening of this museum on a TV show, and all of a sudden I saw what to me seemed to be a portrait in the style of Gilbert Stuart in the background! I immediately wrote the museum, to see if I had actually seen a Stuart! I received a response:
Thank you for your interest in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Gilbert Stuart’s William Smith, ca. 1801 – 1802 is part of our permanent collection. It is located in our Colonial Gallery.

~see the Stuart portrait of Dr. William Smith's daughter and read about Dr. Smith, by clicking here.
This portrait sold recently at auction at Sotheby's; the estimate for the portrait was between 800,000 - 1,200,000 USD.

The museum sounds lovely:
"Surrounded by 120 acres of forests and gardens, Crystal Bridges offers a revitalizing environment for experiencing art and cultural events. The grounds are a place of natural and artistic beauty, equally suited for quiet reflection and exploring with family and friends.
Six pedestrian and multi-use trails wind through the campus, connecting the surrounding neighborhoods, parks, and downtown Bentonville to the Museum."
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art http://www.crystalbridges.org/

Now those of you who live in Bentonville will be able to view a genuine Gilbert Stuart.
Thankyou, Alice.

Stuart was obliged to include Samuel Meeker's hand!

2011-11-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

In the last post I quoted from a letter written by famed academic Reverend Horace Holley to his wife; who, knowing Stuart personally as well as being familiar with his style of work, commented: "He is the best portrait painter in our country, and probably not inferior, in regard to the face, to any artist in the world. But he paints hands, limbs, and drapery badly. [He spends the force of his genius on the characteristic expression of the countenance, and cares little for the other parts of the picture.]" Holley was describing his encounter with the Monroes at the White House (1817), and all were discussing Stuart's commission for Jame's Monroe's portrait. (The President's hands were not included.)

One does not have to look far to find evidence of the truth of the Reverend’s words. Here I provide detail of Meeker’s hand. Note the rather broad stokes and unrefined treatment. Meeker holds some papers~ this certainly indicates Meeker’s wish that the portrait indicate his prominent position as a ‘merchant’. Logs, bookkeeping, manifests etc were not done ‘on the computer’, but written out by hand often in large ledger books. Thus Stuart was obliged to paint Meeker’s hand.

President Monroe's portrait just below, no hands. Meeker's first cousin and a business partner (click here) William Meeker, no hands. (W. Meeker was posted in Liverpool, and died on a sea voyage back to New Orleans in 1812.)

Sun-burnt cheeks? ..."The painting of Mr. Monroe then will meet your taste precisely." 1817

2011-11-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

The Reverend Horace Holley from Boston was elected the president of Transylvania University in Kentucky in 1817. In the following years the University grew in stature and was compared to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, its grand reputation as a higher seat of learning reaching to Europe. Before ten years had passed however, Holley’s Christian persuasion, being a Unitarian, cost him his position and he resigned in March of 1827. After this, the great university declined. Holley went from Kentucky to Louisiana, where he attempted to re-organize the College of New Orleans. Late in the summer Horace and his wife Mary took passage for New York, but he contracted yellowfever, and passed away on July 31, 1827. Transylvania University existed until the Civil War, after which time it was never really revived as a University.

The minister was well connected, being friends with previous Presidents. He wrote to Mary: “Mr. Jefferson is a plain looking old gentleman, draped in a blue coat with yellow buttons, a buff jacket, a pair of snuff colored corduroy pantaloons, blue and white cotton stockings and black slippers up at the heels.” Holley’s papers include several letters from James Monroe. On his way to take up his position at the University, Mr Holley visited with the Monroes at the White House-he then wrote his wife a long letter describing the event, indicating each speaker in the conversation:

“There is a full length portrait of general Washington in the parlour, painted by Stewart. This led me to ask Mr. Monroe about the portrait of himself by Stewart. But I think I will give you the conversation as it happened...[Holley] That is a painting by Stewart I perceive. [Mrs. Monroe] Yes, and it is a very good one. [Holley] He is the best portrait painter in our country, and probably not inferior, in regard to the face, to any artist in the world. But he paints hands, limbs, and drapery badly. He spends the force of his genius on the characteristic expression of the countenance, and cares little for the other parts of the picture. [Monroe] He ought to paint nothing but the head, and should leave the rest to such artists as Copely, who was said to be the painter of collars, cuffs, and button holes. [Holley] Stewart is not ambitious of the distinction acquired in that way. His favorite expression in regard to his portraits, to show that he does as little as possible in the way of drapery, is “that picture has never been to the tailor’s” ...Have you ever received your portrait from Stewart yet? [Monroe] No Sir. It is not his habit to finish a picture and send it home. Have you ever seen it at his room? [Holley] Yes, Sir, several times. [Monroe] How far is it finished? [Holley] Nothing but the head. [Mrs. Monroe] Is it a good likeness? [Holley] A remarkably good one. It is the general opinion that it is one of the artist’s happiest efforts with his pencil. You will be pleased with it, but will observe immediately, when you see it, that your husband was sun-burnt as a traveller ought to be, and that the artist has been so long in the habit of copying faithfully what he sees that he has given this in the shading of the picture. [Mrs. Monroe] I shall not like it the less for that. I think Stewart generally makes the color of the cheeks too brilliant, especially in the portraits of men, as in that of general Washington. [Holley] The painting of Mr. Monroe then will meet your taste precisely."

Notwithstanding his fame as an American educator of distinguished ability, Holley is known for his letters to his wife.

James Monroe by Gilbert Stuart 1817

James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was the fifth President of the United States (1817–1825). Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, most noted for his proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further European intervention in the Americas.

The letter is quoted from “Gilbert Stuart” by Barratt and Miles, p 312, it is taken from the Horace Holley Papers, letter L40, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

A FINE PORTRAIT BY STUART OF JOHN ADAMS, 1824

2011-10-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

John Adams by Gilbert Stuart 1824 at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

This later portrait of our second President of the United States John Adams (1735-1826) is known to have been painted by Stuart sometime in 1824, as his son wrote that the painting was completed during Adam’s ninetieth year. It is generally acknowledged to be fine depiction by the portrait artist despite Stuart's advancing age. Barratt/Miles write: “Since he first painted Adams in 1800, Stuart’s brushwork had softened, becoming less precise, and showing signs of a tremulous hand.” p 322 (see book info in permanent area on right) "Completion of the portrait apparently took a full year." p 322

Also according to Barratt/Miles taken from the diary of Son J.Q Adams: John Quincy Adams “called...upon Stewart the Painter, and engaged him to go out to Quincy, and there paint a Portrait of my father—More than twenty years have passed since he painted the former portrait, and time has wrought so much of change on his countenance that I wish to possess a likeness of him as he now is. Stewart started some objections, of trivial difficulties—The want of an Easel, of a room properly adapted to the light; but finally promised that he would go, and take with him his best brush...”

In the last post (scroll down), two portraits are shown, attributed to Gilbert Stuart. Stuart was so willing, and capapble, to paint an aged sea captain and his wife in steady, plentiful detail, yet had ‘trivial objections’ to painting the second president of the United States at this point in time? I think it can be easily speculated that the pair of Schermerhorn portraits are wrongly attributed to the great master. {Which would explain the low starting bid.} Did the sellers/buyers consult any experts about the attribution?

A Fighter for Our Liberty

“It was in the courtrooms of Massachusetts and on the printed page, principally in the newspapers of Boston, that Adams had distinguished himself. Years of riding the court circuit and his brilliance before the bar had brought him wide recognition and respect. And of greater consequence in recent years had been his spirited determination and eloquence in the cause of American rights and liberties.” “John Adams” by David McCullough, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001

they seem authentic...Mr and Mrs Schermerhorn, for a (very) reasonable price!

2011-10-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Mr. and Mrs. Schermerhorn attributed to Gilbert Stuart c. 1825

Cowan's October 8 Fall Fine and Decorative Art Auction (Cincinnati) offered two Stuart portraits, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Schermerhorn. Now how is this..the estimate was only $1,000 - $2,000 and starting bid for $500.!
The Price Realized: $10,575.00. (Something is odd about the pricing here, Chinese artifacts are definitely the hot items in the auction circuit!)

The description was given:
Attributed to Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755-1828), ca 1825, includes two unsigned portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Schermerhorn, both housed in decorative gilt and gesso frame; 32.5 x 25.5 in.

A New York sea captain, Mr. Schermerhorn became a successful merchant in the newly independent United States. Born in 1756 in the colonies, he died in 1826, shortly after this portrait was probably painted. Cornelius is shown in a three-quarter pose, seated in a mahogany Grecian chair against a swag of red drapery with blue gray sky in the background. The companion portrait of Mrs. Schermerhorn depicts her seated in a heavier gilt Grecian chair with red upholstery.

There was no other information offered on the portraits. If the portraits were done in 1825, then Mr. Schermerhorn would be 70 years old. Neither he nor his wife look to be much past 60, I am sceptical of the date given to the portraits (c. 1825). The pair are not in the Lawrence Park volumes, nor in (George) Mason. Gilbert Stuart, if in fact he completed these portraits in 1825, passed away 3 years later (1828)--and he certainly spent much time on some of the accents in these portraits, such as the shawl with the rose border. Unusual, since Gibby did not like to focus on much of anything except for the face. The hands are very well done as well. hmmmm.

I did some sleuthing on Mr. Schermerhorn and found this (courtesy Schermerhorn Genealogy and Family Chronicles):

Cornelius I. Schermerhorn lived at Schodack Landing, N. Y. He was a merchant and large land and vessel owner, several of his vessels being engaged in trade with the East Indies. In 1793 he was a Lieutenant in his father's regiment. In 1798 he was Captain of Light Infantry in Brig. Gen. Henry K. Van Rensselaer's Rensselaer Co. Brigade. 1798-1800 he was Adjutant in Col. Nicholas Staat's Rensselaer Co. Regiment. March 30, 1803, he was commissioned as Major and on March 12, 1810, as Lieutenant Colonel, and April 3, 1812, as Colonel of the 43rd Regiment, 8th Brigade, Third Division of the New York Militia under command of Brigadier-General Jacob A. Fort and Major General Henry Livingston. Colonel Schermerhorn served on the frontier with his regiment during the war of 1812.
Cornelius I. Schermerhorn held the office of assessor in Schodack in 1795, and from 1800 to 1809 was supervisor of the village. In 1808, 1809, 1810, 1811 and 1818 he was a member of the New York State Assembly, and during that service he way prominently identified with the plans for the inauguration of the Erie Canal.

A characterization from the pen of a grandson, reads as follows:
"My grandfather, Col. Cornelius I. Schermerhorn lived in the house which still stands (1905) a little north of the village of Schodack Landing and quite near the bank of the river. It is said that this house was built about 1760 with bricks brought from Holland. It is an excellent type of the better class of houses of the Dutch settlers. My grandfather in many respects resembled his father, though less domineering in character. He was silent and reserved and like his father a leader among the men with whom he was associated. Through his business ability he added materially to the property left him by his father, and at the time of his death in 1828, he owned nearly all the farms in the vicinity of the village. He had in addition large vessel interests, part of which was engaged in trade with China and the East.
His wife Elizabeth Monden, was an exceedingly bright, vivacious woman, with a highly developed religious nature. She was a descendent of Heer Johannes La Montagne, vice-director of the West Indies Co., at Fort Orange, Albany, from 1659 to 1664. The family was of Huguenot origin, emigrating from Holland about the middle of the 17th century. The name became changed to Monden, Monton, Munden."

With regard to authenticity Cowan's Auctions provides these words: Cowan's Auctions makes limited warranty concerning the authenticity of any lot for a period of 21 days following the sale. If a buyer is not satisfied that the item purchased is genuine, they may, at their expense, obtain the opinion of two mutually agreed upon recognized experts in the field of the disputed item. If these experts determine the item is not genuine, the buyer's sole remedy under the auctioneer's warranty shall be the rescission of the sale and refund of the original price paid for the item.

Also: Cowan's Auctions, Inc. assumes no responsibility for correct descriptions or defects in any lot, and makes no warranty in connection therewith.

WHODUNNIT was it a Stuart? (Continued...) What the experts say.

2011-10-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

It is well-known that Stuart did not sign his paintings, he felt that a portrait of his WAS the signature! I received a mail, from someone who wanted to know if I thought that the portrait of his ancestor, David Bradlee, was a Stuart. Substantial similarities, but ...

I wrote “Hi Ted, Thanks for sending me your note! My inclination is to say that it is not a Stuart.... [click for post>Determining a genuine Gilbert Stuart portrait is not always easy!] I then suggested he send the image to the three reigning experts. One is Dr. Ellen G. Miles, Curator Emerita, Department of Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The others are Carrie Barratt Associate Director for Collections and Administration at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Dorinda Evans, author of a bio on Stuart. The process is fascinating, I think.

Ted wrote Ellen Miles:
I think I may have a Gilbert Stuart portrait of one of my ancestors. I have attached a photo. David W. Bradlee, Boston, 1765-1833. He was in the shipping business. The letter that he holds reads, “Painted at the Columbian Museum Boston”. It is not signed. David’s father, David, participated in the Boston Tea Party. How can I authenticate the portrait? Ted W

Ted,
I have forwarded your inquiry to a couple of people who may have the answer; it’s definitely not by Stuart, in terms of technique and coloring. The inscription suggests it is either by Ethan Allen Greenwood, or by Edward Savage (it looks more like a Greenwood to me). You may hear directly from someone other than me! Ellen M.

Hi Ellen, Thank you for taking the time to look at the portrait. I really appreciate your input.

No problem. It’s nice to see a painting with an inscription that helps identify it! Plus, you know who the sitter is, which is very helpful! Let me know if you don’t hear anything within a week or two, okay? Thanks!

Does the inscription help since you know that Greenwood and Savage painted at the Columbian Museum in Boston?

About Savage and Greenwood, and the museum, I may have jumped too quickly! The portrait may not date from a date that is late enough for this to help with an attribution. On the museum itself, you can consult the Wikipedia entry on the Columbian Museum, which includes the following:“Daniel Bowen (ca. 1760–1856) established the Columbian Museum in Boston in 1795. Located "at the head of the mall" near the Boston Common, the museum's collection included items from Edward Savage's "New York Museum."…”..after 1807, Bowen suffered financial ruin, and withdrew from museum operations. William M. S. Doyle assumed directorship thenceforth, until 1825, when Ethan Allen Greenwood acquired the collections for his newly established New England Museum.”
Doyle was also a portrait painter.
Let’s wait to see what others say! Thanks. Ellen G. Miles (Dr.)

Carrie Barratt answered:
Dear Mr. Wight,
With apologies for the delay, I regret that I find no record in my books or files of a Stuart portrait of David W. Bradlee. The picture looks post-Stuart to me, perhaps by James Frothingham or another younger Boston artist who painted in his style. You could contact the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has many Boston portraits by Stuart to make a comparison. Sorry not to be of more assistance.
Carrie Rebora Barratt

from Dorinda, the most pragmatic and terse of the three (in my opinion):
Thanks for the images. Unfortunately, this is not by Gilbert Stuart. It looks as though it might have been over-cleaned on the face (down to the grayish ground) and then re-painted. I can't immediately identify this hand, but, from the costume, it was painted in the early 1790s. If you can be sure the inscription is original (clean cracks, or look at it under ultraviolet light in a darkened room for repaint in the last century), perhaps you could find out more about the museum. Good luck. Dorinda Evans

Ted wrote me after all these responses:
I am mad at my ancestor for being cheap and not getting Gilbert Stuart to do his portrait...especially when his first cousins had Stuart do theirs!

10 years later, Sept 11, 2011

2011-09-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

On this day my highschool friend, visiting his daughter & family in San Jose Ca, came over the hill to spend the day with me. We went to ISB together, International School Bangkok. These pics are of Point Lobos. In this place of beauty we sat, talked, reminisced. Later we met up with my daughter for Thai dinner at the Star of Siam in Soquel. Jim served at ground-zero in the second week after the attack. He was part of a search and rescue team from Utah.

Samuel Meeker’s own ancestry (and therefore mine too!)

2011-08-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Samuel Meeker (detail) by Gilbert Stuart 1803 Philadelphia

Samuel Meeker could proudly point out his ancestry going back 5 generations to William Meeker (b 1620 d. 1690) ‘first associate’ of New Jersey & progenitor of all Meekers in the USA. William Meeker and sons Joseph and Benjamin were among the first eighty associates of Elizabethtown, the first English settlement in New Jersey. In the Revolution, a large number of Continental officers came from Elizabethtown. Many members of the Meeker family itself were known far and wide for their dedicated participation in this struggle for independence, and were famed for their “physical strength and moral courage.” The Pictorial Field Book of The Revolution by Benson J. Lossing Vol. 1 chap. 14 p 325 Their significant contribution to the war effort was also well known to Gen. George Washington, as Captain Meeker (Samuel’s father, for more click here) as well as Major Meeker (first cousin of Samuel’s father for more click here) are mentioned in letters during the time of the war.

A Long Line of Patriots
Long before the “Boston Tea Party”, the stage was set for the early Meeker settlers to be defiant of British authority, stemming from a lengthy and bitter contest over town rights. In 1664 a group of hardy colonists asked for, and were given permission by the newly installed British deputy governor, to buy a tract of land from the native Indians west of Staten Island. For many years afterwards, ownership of this land was the source of controversy and dispute between the ‘Associates’ who based their ownership rights on this purchase from the Indians, and the British ‘Proprietors’ who claimed the purchase to be invalid. The original purchasers, about 80 men, were named “the Elizabethtown Associates.” By 1670 the young ‘upstart’ Royal Governor P. Carteret was disregarding the claims of the Associates and even allotted land as a reward to his servant Richard Michel. The townspeople regarded his actions as unwarranted acts of usurpation. “William Meeker, Hur Tomson, Samuel Marsh, Sr., Joseph Meeker, Jeffrey Jones, Nicholas Carter, John Ogden Jr., and Luke Watson tore down Michel's fence, pulled clapboards from his house, and pigs went into Michel's property and destroyed his garden ‘full of necessary garden herbs.’ ” It was a day to be remembered in the annals of Elizabeth; a day for the inauguration of an open and determined resistance to all usurpation, and a manly defense of their vested rights.” (from History of Elizabeth, New Jersey by Rev. Edwin F. Hatfield 1868)

“During all the years the Meeker family had been a brave one that had helped make Newark history from the first Meeker settler [William Meeker], who was given the land on which the homestead stood after playing the constable in defiance of Carteret and pulling down some houses and fences of which he and the “Associates” didn’t approve. Thereby hangs a tale, for the beginnings of which one has to turn back Jersey pages to the 28th of October, 1664. There was then a tract of land lying west of Staten Island which some hardy colonists from Long Island and New Haven purchased and occupied. They were known as the “Associates” and among their number was this first Meeker of all, whom history dubs Goodman Meeker….”
(from The Meeker Family of Early New Jersey by Leroy Meeker 1973)

your ob('ient) se('rvant)...

The Bingham estate is finally liquidated in 1964, heirs divide what is left; William Bingham on the front page of The New York Times!

2011-08-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

On November 15, 1964, a picture and story of William Bingham was on the front page of The New York Times! I was alerted to this by the following sentence in “The Golden Voyage: The Life and Times of William Bingham 1752-1804” by Robert Alberts. (Scroll down for the Stuart portrait of Bingham or click here, and here for more on his wife Anne Willing Bingham and her Stuart portrait, socialite extraordinaire of the capital Philadelphia.) From the book; "On Sunday, November 15, 1964, one of the Stuart portraits of William Bingham appeared on the front page of the New York Times, with the story of his famous trust.”p.432

I am not sure why author Alberts designated the image (seen on left) as that of a portrait by Stuart! In any case, the article is a very interesting epilogue to William and Anne Willing Bingham, who were at the lofty top of the prominent political and social elite of Philadelphia during the time that this city was the capital of our nation (1790s). In one of my recent entries were the words “As glamorous as the 1790s were for Bingham, they came to a crashing end.”
A commentator wrote... It would be nice to know why it all came "crashing down." Did they have economic, health and political reversals all in the space of a couple of years? Why? Did William break a mirror or walk under a ladder or something?

The Crash

William for most of his relatively short life (died age 52) knew only success; vast riches and immense political success, all of which was gold-plated by the fortuitous choice of his wife, Anne Willing. From “These Fiery Frenchified Dames” by Susan Branson (University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia 2001); “Anne Bingham is well remembered in the various memoirs and reminiscences of Philadelphia society in the late eighteenth century. Her ability to facilitate political sociability by bringing together a wide variety of individuals at her balls, dinners, and theater parties, as well as her patronage of rising authors such as Susanna Rowson, marked her success as a true salonniere. The most remarkable thing about Bingham’s achievement is that she elevated social occasions to a new level. The combination of her well-learned lessons at home and abroad, with her presence at the center of the national political community, provided Bingham the opportunity to help create a public political space for women which had not previously existed in America.” p.140

Samuel Breck, famed memoire writer of that time, made an entry into in his diary on July 28, 1858 when he was 88 (he was a Schuylkill neighbor of Meeker)—...after recording the temps for that day, his mind returned to events of sixty years earlier, and once again to Anne Bingham. “Mrs. Bingham stood above competition in her day; nor has anyone of equal refinement in address, or social stateliness, and graceful superintendence of a splendid establishment, been produced since in any circle of our city.”

William doted on his wife. Life was the perfect picture of success until the first disaster, occuring in 1799. Maria, the second daughter, at the nubil young age of 15, eloped with the Comte de Tilly, causing a scandal that rocked society. He was handsome, experienced, an attentive French count; but poor, and more than twice her age. The parents fell into a raging swoon, kidnapping the daughter back from Tilly, and arranging for a divorce. A terrible terrible shock on all levels, for this family.
The second serious blow for William Bingham, occurring shortly after that 'devastating' event, was the removal of the federal government to Washington in the summer of 1800. The decision to not leave Philadelphia was surely difficult and heart-rending for William, but was made all the more easier by the pregnancy of Anne with her 3rd child, age 37.
The pregnancy went well, a boy was born in late December 1800.

But within months, Anne fell fatally ill. “Too soon after her confinement, against the instructions of her physician and the advice of her family and friends, Anne had gone on one of the day sleighing parties she loved so much—possibly an all-night party with a fiddler beside the coachman, warm bricks for the feet, frequent stops at taverns for hot punch and oyster stew, and travel over the snow with incredible speed and smoothness.” (from The Golden Voyage, p 411.)
It seems she caught pneumonia. Within a few weeks, she was dead, leaving William and their two daughters, and a baby son behind. It was the spring of 1801. Politics gone, beloved wife and mother gone, rocked by scandal—the family left for England. William left his infant son to the care of Thomas Willing (Anne’s brother).
In 1803 he became ill and died. It is suggested he never recovered from his wife’s death; clinical evidence indicates a stroke.

(from the article above; The New York Times Nov. 15, 1964)

The estate of a man reputed to have been the richest American when the 13 colonies won independence has been ordered liquidated.....William Bingham, a Philadelphia merchant and landowner who had been a Senator from Pennsylvania in the second United States Congres, died in 1804 while visiting Britain. His estate was held in trust. Once the estate owned 2,000,000 acres in Maine, but that was sold about the time of the Civil War.
Mr. Bingham also had extensive property holdings in New York and Pennsylvania, including huge tracts of wilderness in Potter, McKean, Elk and Tioga counties on this state’s northern border.
Some of the land was held jointly with his father-in-law, Thomas Willing, a former Mayor of Pennsylvania and an Associate Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court before and after the Revolutionary War. R. Sturgis Ingersoll, one of the trustees of the estate terminated by Judge Alfred L. Taxis Jr. of the Montgomery County Orphans Court, said today that “nobody has the faintest idea” what the estate was orginally worth.
“He owned most of the state of Maine,” he continued. “He owned all of Mount Desert Island where the Northeast Harbor and Bar Harbor are located. He owned tens of thousands of acres of land in Western Pennsylvania.”
Judge Taxis said the assets-- $699,228 in principal and $138,009 in income—would be distributed in shares ranging from $25. to $55,000.
Mr. Ingersoll said the trustees disposed of the last of the real estate in July, mainly oil properties in western Pa that brought over $800,000. “The oil properties were producing less and less income,’ Mr Ingersoll said. ‘With the multiplication of beneficiaries and with the expenses of handling the estate running up, we thought it wise to sell and terminate the trust.”
Judge Taxis explained that under the terms of the trust it had no termination date and could therefore run indefinitely. He said that the rule of law against perpetuity did not apply in this instance.
Throughout the years, the income from the property or proceeds from the sale of the land was distributed to heirs, who were the beneficiaries of the trust. He said the trustees had “broad powers,” and could invest, buy or sell, being charged only with “prudent adminstration” of the estate. The estate at the time of Mr. Bingham’s death was worth much more than it was today, because much of it has been sold in the intervening years. He said that after the last land was sold, the trustees argued that there was no longer a need for a manager of the estate, and “I agreed with them,” and approved the liquidation. Mr. Bingham was born in Philadelphia in 1752. His two daughters married into the Baring banking family in England. One of his descendants was Lord Ashburton who, in 1842, negotiated the Webster-Ashburton treaty that settled the US-Canada boundary dispute.

Wealthy at age of 28.
William Bingham was an aristocratic entrepreneur who exploited his social and political connections and an intimate knowledge of the lucrative West Indian trade to become the richest man in Revolutionary American at the age of 28. He was born in 1752 of a wealthy Philadelphia family that had been prominent in England before some of its members emigrated to Pa in the early 18th century.
After his graduation from the College of Pennsylvania, the forefunner of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1768, he quickly established a reputation as a brilliant businessman and was made British Consul at St. Pierre on Martinique in 1770. Bingham’s duties were as much commercial as diplomatic and he used his position to begin amassing a fortune through private speculations in trade. The West Indies trade at the time was a tricornered business that consisted of shipping slaves from Africa to the Indies, where they were traded for sugar, shipping the sugar to New England, where it was made into rum, and then selling the rum in America, or exporting it to England, or using it to purchase more slaves in Africa.
After the Revolutionary War broke out, Bingham resigned his position as a British Consul and in 1776 became the West Indies commerical agent for the Continental Congress for four years. He continued his personal speculation in trade, however, and supplemented this by profitably investing in privateering vessels that preyed on British merchant shipping during the Revolution. Privateers were privately owned warships that obtained authorization, or letters of marque, from a government giving them the privilege of seizing enemy ships in wartime. The seized vessels and their cargoes were then sold and the profits divided amongst the government owners of the ship and the crew. The letters of marque distinguished privateering from ordinary piracy.
By 1780, when Bingham returned to Philadelphia, he was a millionaire and the wealthiest man in America.
That same year he married Anne Willing, a beautiful Philadelphia aristocrat. Miss Willing’s father was Thomas Willing, a wealthy merchant and the business partner of Robert Morris [click here for his Stuart portrait], a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the second-ranking American millionaire of the period.
Bingham and Thomas Willing became business associates and founded The Bank of North American, in 1781.
Anne Bingham also became the leading hostess in the city, at that time the country’s capital.
The Bingham mansion on Third street, with its marble stairways and liveried footmen, became an important social and political center for the Federalist party. General Washington was entertained there often and in one of his letters mentions that he had promised Anne Bingham to sit for a portrait by Gilbert Stuart. [the Lansdown portrait, click here]
The Binghams preserved the pre-Revolutionary custom of having footmen announce guests as they arrived for social occasions, however, this was said to have offended egalitarian moralists of the period.
Bingham made his purchases of more than 2 million acres of land in Maine in the late 1780s and early 90s for a reputed $250,000.00. Maine was at that time a province of the Commonwealth of Ma. Most of the first tract of approximately a million acres of timberland east of the Penobscot River was bought from the Commonwealth of Ma. The other tract of similar size along the Kennebec River was bought from General Henry Knox, President Washington’s Secretary of War.
There are no available estimates of what the land would be worth in terms of present real estate prices.
Bingham served in the United States Senate from 1795 to 1801 and was elected Senate president pro tempore in 1797.
He retired from public life in 1801 to manage his fortune. He was in Bath, England, when he died in 1804. He is buried in the parish church there.

Determining a genuine Gilbert Stuart portrait is not always easy!

2011-07-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

"I think I have a Gilbert Stuart portrait of my ancestor David Bradlee. He lived in Boston and was the son of a Boston Tea Party participant. See the attached portrait and let me know what you think."

I wrote back:

"Hi Ted, Thanks for sending me your note! My inclination is to say that it is not a Stuart. However, what also helps in the determination (since Stuart didn't sign his pics) is more factual information, did any other individual in his social, familial, or business circle have their portrait done by the master that you know of? Stuart moved to Boston in 1805...can you place how old your ancestor is (do you know family lines) and does this jive with dates? I am not an expert. But looks to me like the touches that make a Stuart a Stuart are missing, could have been done in 'that prevailing style'... but in general its safer to say that it is not, than it is! Where is the portrait now? I recommend that you beef up the information on your ancestor, be able to determine the ownership through the generations, point out how your ancestor was able to afford the master. My ancestor started a bank, got the first loan of $30,000. and owned a villa, his cousin was also painted by Stuart! Its those kind of clues that can help clinch the deal, on top of the quality of the piece. Then send the photo to one of the experts on Stuart such as Miles, Barratt, and GOOD LUCK !

Beth

Insight into the designation of the word 'merchant'; "Samuel Meeker, of Philadelphia, Merch't."

2011-07-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

From the Pennsylvania Gazette 28 Oct. 1797, (see the front page of the paper below)**Click to enlarge, and view all the interesting articles that Meeker, Deman, & Co. sold!

When Samuel Meeker’s marriage was announced in the local press, he was called a Merchant: "1792 Mar. 3 - Samuel Meeker, of Philadelphia, Merch't., to Jane daughter of Jonathan Hampton, Esq. of Elizabeth Town." Today, the word merchant would mean ‘businessman’, or ‘financier’, in fact, nothing special. But at the turn of the century, and certainly in earlier times, the term merchant was a title that signified something to be proud of, it signaled reputation. “At a remove of two centuries this may appear somewhat prosaic, but in colonial America, where most people made a living by toil, the station of the merchant was something quite rarefied. They lived by their wits, but more than that, they lived by their character: partners and investors had to rely on a merchant’s word as his bond; finanical arrangements rested on individual credit, established through a past record for fair dealing. It was presumed that these assets flowed from a scrupulous sense of personal integrity....” "Robert Morris – Financier of the American Revolution" by C. Rappleye.p25

The world of the merchant at this time, saturated with wartime uncertainties and with minimal means to achieve even a reasonable level of communication, was filled with tremendous risk; fortunes were made and lost overnight. To survive in such a world, an individual had to be smart, capable, and trustworthy; he could be counted on in difficult times. I think these qualities can be seen in Samuel Meeker's portrait.

Deciphering a portrait’s message: Elizabeth Willing Powel

2011-07-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Willing was the sister of Thomas Willing, father of Anne Willing, featured in the last two posts (click here, and here, for the posts or scroll down). Elizabeth, after a few failed romances (rumor linked her John Dickinson the celebrated author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania) settled on Samuel Powel whose grandfather was known as the “rich carpenter”—this ‘rich carpenter’ had prospered from the combination of his trade as carpenter, his investment in real estate, and a stratgic marriage to a Quakeress.

Elizabeth Willing married Samuel Powel in 1769. She lost two sons soon after birth, remained childless, and was widowed for thirty-six years.

Using intuition, common sense and scholarly research, David Maxey has written a delightful ‘who dunnit’ mystery to unlock the secrets on the origins of a portrait of Elizabeth. What do the symbols mean in the portrait, why is she dressed the way she is (no jewels, simple dress without stay), when and why was the portrait commisssioned and who painted it? What happened to it with the passage of time?

All of this is answered admirably by David Maxey in
“A Portrait of ELIZABETH WILLING POWEL 1743-1830”
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2006

To all of you, my readers, I highly recommend this delightful booklet on Elizabeth Willing Powel, and the deciphering of her Portrait. Hint: the portrait was NOT done by Gilbert Stuart.

William Bingham falls in love on a summer day... (& a merchant of Philadelphia on a different scale!)

2011-06-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Samuel Meeker was a banker/merchant. William Bingham was also a banker/merchant, but on a different scale than Meeker, thus this portrait (above) which is somewhat more embellished than Meeker’s. William became the richest man in America before age 40, directing his fleet of ships at sea and owning some 4,000,000 acres in Pennsylvania, New York and Maine. Within his banking activities, he wrote the by-laws and was the dominant director of the nation’s first bank, and at Alexander Hamilton’s request outlined the government’s first fiscal program. He married into England’s most powerful family of merchant-bankers, Ms Anne Willing (scroll down to the entry below for more of her story).

“How, or when, or where it happened is not known; but on one of those summer days, between drilling with the militia, and tending to his affairs as a merchant, and helping to found the bank, and settling his account with Congress, and defending himself in the Pilgrim lawsuit, William Bingham discovered Anne Willing. She had been twelve—not yet twelve— when he sailed for Martinique; now she was, or would shortly be, sixteen, and she was the most beautiful young woman in Philadelphia.” From the book “Golden Voyage, Life and Times of William Bingham 1752-1804” by Robert Alberts.

Anne Willing Bingham at 21, sketch by Gilbert Stuart

SCROLL DOWN, FOR THE STUART PORTRAIT OF ANNE WILLING BINGHAM

A brief story of glittering society in the new Republic; daughter of a wealthy Philadelphian merchant, Anne [Willing] Bingham

2011-06-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Her grandfather was Charles Willing, a British-born merchant in Philadelphia. At the southern end of the Philadelphia waterfront, he operated a countinghouse, a warehouse, a retail store...and, even more importantly, Charles Willing maintained several ‘square-rigged frigates’ in the wharf stretching to the north for another two miles along the west bank of the Delaware. Philadelphia was at this time [c.1750] the busiest port in the colonies, and the Willing firm was fast becoming a leader in colonial trade. Charles eldest son Thomas Willing, sent to England to a private academy, returned to Philadelphia in 1750 and became a partner in the firm. “Their practice followed the contours of the British imperial economy: the firm exported Pennsylvania produce, primarily wheat, to Europe, and imported wine, manufactured goods, and immigrants—usually indentured servants from the continent, but also slaves from Africa and from British plantations in the Carribbean.” p. 13 Robert Morris, Financier of the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye, pub. Simon & Schuster NY, 2010

Charles Willing, while making rounds of the pest house, died of disease in 1754. Thomas assumed control of the business, as well as various prominent public functions—he was a justice of the peace and served twice as mayor of Philadelphia, was a member of the Continental Congress, President of the Bank of North America (the first national bank.) Willing became an ally of Alexander Hamilton (did Stuart paint his portrait? click here) in his quest to reduce the national debt through loans and a central bank. He married Anne McCall in 1763, and together they had thirteen children. Their daughter Anne Willing in 1780 married William Bingham, a business associate of Thomas Willing. “In 1776 the Continental Congress sent Bingham to French Martinique in the West Indies where he secured produce and munitions to supply the American army. He amassed great personal wealth through trade and ownership of privateers, which would keep him in litigation for most of his life. In 1780, he returned to Philadelphia and married Anne Willing, the daughter of his then former business partner. Between William's wealth and kind demeanor, and Anne's beauty and spirit for entertainment, they would become Philadelphia's (and possibly the United States') leading social couple." Anne used her wealth and personal connections to recreate salon society, described as brilliant balls, sumptuous dinners and constant receptions, which she had experienced in Paris.

"The 1790s proved to be the high-point of Bingham's public life. Philadelphia was the nation's capitol, and Bingham played host to the so-called Federalist court. He used his large, extremely elegant Philadelphia mansion to entertain the political and social elites of the new country. By reputation Bingham was the wealthiest man in America, a view reinforced in 1800 when he was assessed the highest tax of anyone in Philadelphia.... As glamorous as the 1790s were for Bingham, they came to a crashing end. After the national capitol moved to Washington, D.C., his wife Anne died in 1801. Soon after Anne's death the distraught Bingham moved to England with his son. He died at Bath, England, in 1804, possibly following a stroke. Although his moment of glory was short-lived, Bingham certainly made a huge impression on the United States in its infancy.” http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/bingham_wm.html

Anne Willing Bingham by Gilbert Stuart 1797
Philadelphia Museum of Art

The portrait was painted at Lansdown, the Bingham's country house on the Schuylkill River, not far from Fountain Green.
For more on Anne Bingham and Lansdown click here.

The rather revealing cut of her black dress draped with the large gold pendant on a gold chain.... most likely provoked excited gossip about this portrait in the city. This opulence is balanced by indication of her intellect, the books; she belonged to a generation of women who questioned the traditional roles for females as set by society and custom.

The debt ceiling fiasco & Alexander Hamilton first Treasury Secretary

2011-05-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

The statue of Alexander Hamilton at the Treasury entrance reminds Mr. Geithner every day of the importance of maintaining the nations's creditworthiness.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gibby did not paint Alexander Hamilton. Possibly because Alexander Hamilton worked for the Federal government, and his salary was not as sufficient as necessary for such a portrait (vs merchants in the private sector such as Meeker)? At the time of Hamilton's death, Gov. Morris organized a secret subscription fund among Hamilton's friends to help keep the family afloat.

But Hamilton's portrait was painted by John Trumbull in 1806 (two years after the duel with Aaron Burr.)

A tribute to William and Kate...God Bless the Queen!

2011-04-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

and God Bless America for the Revolution! Imagine needing to pay taxes...for the upkeep of a monarchy!

One of my favorite Stuart portraits of Washington, called the Gibbs-Channing-Avery portrait (refers to the past owners). Now residing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Painted 1795.

Stuart went to Philadelphia in 1794, expressly to paint George Washington's portrait; which he did, numerous times--- three from life, and many replicas (he painted at least one hundred versions). I doubt that he was thinking much about posterity, perhaps more about a lucrative means of settling his debts. These portraits brought him much visibility and fame. By the time Meeker had his portrait done in 1803, the President had been gone for four years, allowing this phase to slow and enabling the artist to turn to 'lesser lights'. The portraits done in these years, in Philadelphia, round-about the turn of the century, are generally acknowledged to be among his best....In the words of William Dunlap: "He left us the features of those who have achieved immortality for themselves, and made known others who would but for his art have slept in their merited obscurity." Dunlap 1834, vol 1, p.196

Samuel Meeker, a financier in 1797 (age 34), how simple it was then...

2011-04-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

A law passed in Congress July 1790 that established Philadelphia as the interim capital, and all government offices began to straggle over to Pennsylvania, from Manhattan. At this time Alexander Hamilton, as treasury secretary, was chieftain of the biggest government department.

William Simmons was an accountant in the War Department and clerk in the Treasury Department Auditors Office. As such, he would have been in intimate contact with Alexander Hamilton, discussing pay, finance, and accounting & performing duties such as payroll of the military, dispensing checks for which the government was obliged (ie for the construction of a military frigate), settling compensations, pensions, salaries, accounts etc. As a small example, in April of 1794, Henry Knox wrote Simmons requesting an estimate of monthly expenses so that officers could receive ‘subsistance on the first day of the month rather than the last day.’ Mr. Simmons was the chief accountant through the war of 1812.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilmington, Delaware, 20 Oct 1797

Wm Simmons, Esq.

Sir,

Enclosed is X's draft on James McHenry Esq. at ten days eight (?) * Five hundred dollars in favor of X which I beg you to accept, and return to me by post ***

Your obed(ient) Ser(vant)

Sam(uel) Meeker

Samuel Denman (business partner of Samuel Meeker) & wife Anna Maria; and their terrible tragedy

2011-02-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

Anna Maria [Hampton] Denman in detail

In the last entry, an advertisement for Meeker's firm “Meeker, Denman, & Co.” in the Philadelphia Gazette, October 23, 1797 was shown. Samuel Denman was Samuel Meeker’s brother-in-law. Samuel Meeker married Jane Hampton on March 3, 1792 in St. John’s Church Elizabethtown, N.J.

Recorded: 1792 Mar. 3 - Samuel Meeker, of Philadelphia, Merch't., to Jane daughter of Jonathan Hampton, Esq. of Elizabeth Town. Jane had a younger sister Anna Maria Hampton. Anna Maria married Samuel Denman (1774-1816) on December 10, 1801 by Rev. Henry Kollock, pastor of the First Presbyterian church at Elizabethtown.

Perhaps due to the divorce of Samuel’s twin sister Phebe from Alexander Cochran, Samuel’s first business partner, now Meeker dropped Cochran and joined forces with his brother-in-law Samuel Denman. So far as I know Anna Maria and Samuel Denman had two sons: tragically both died at a young age. Young Jonathan Hampton Denman died July 23 1804, age 4 months and three days, “at the Seat of Samuel Meeker Esq.” (Fountain Green.) Young William Denman passed away at age 4 years and 9 months, also at Fountain Green. This couple knew terrible tragedy, and father Samuel Denman also passed away at the young age of 42.

An eulogy to William Denman, age 4 1/2.

The vernal hope of lengthened life is crop'd

The opening blossom in the grave is dropt

Yet weep not, Parents, for his mouldering clay,

But rest your comfort on the judgment day.

For happy innocence, that knows no crime

Shall bloom eternal in the heavenly clime.

In an amazing bit of sleuthing, I found that images existed of the Denmans, preserved in miniature. You can imagine how thrilled I was, to discover images of Meeker's relatives, and to learn some of their story.

American Portrait miniatures

courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Watercolors on ivory in gilded copper case;

hair reserve 2 3/4" x 2 3/8"

artist: Edward Greene Malbone

Samuel and Anna Maria [Hampton] Denman, ca. 1801

The book "American Portrait Miniatures" is now available; by Carrie Rebora Barratt and Lori Zabar. The volume is the first complete catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of American portrait miniatures, "tiny, vivid miracles of the painter's art."

The Museum's holdings are the world's most comprehensive.

In a twist of family ancestry, my gt gt grandfather Ben Cory's grandmother was Susanna [Denman] Cory (1773-1851). Thus I have Denman blood, but not by Samuel, for remember, he gifted the portrait to his twin sister.

An advertisement for Meeker's firm in the Philadelphia Gazette, October 23, 1797: Meeker, Denman, & Co.

2011-02-08T15:09:00.000-08:00

click on image for a larger view

Meeker, Denman, & Co
No. 22 South Front Street

Have received by the *** from Grenock, to N.
York, Cumberland, from Hull, Clothier and Sey-
mour from Liverpool, and William Penn from
London.
A GENERAL ASSORTMENT OF
Dry Goods and Hard Ware,
Which they now offer for sale on moderate terms,
for cash or the usual credit, viz.

Fine and Coarse broad-cloths
Plain and xxx cloths
Plain and printed cashmere

...
Colour’d and black silk handkerchiefs
Silk and cotton bandanas
An elegant assortment of callicoes
Furniture

Silk, cotton

In 1797 Meeker was 34. It appears that by this time he had already been in Philadelphia, having left the Meeker family homestead in the Westfields NJ, for at least 10 years —(in 1787 he was listed as a private in the 'First Company, Second City Battalion, Colonel James Read' in Philadelphia.) Five years before (1792) Samuel’s twin sister Phebe (my direct ancestor!) had married Alexander Cochran in a prominent wedding in the “Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia”, and Meeker’s first business partner was his brother-in-law Cochran; the firm was known as Meeker Cochran & Co. Within five years the partnership was dissolved (and Phebe had divorced.) By 1797 Meeker was busily engaged in commerce with his next firm Meeker, Denman, & Co. Samuel Denman was also Samuel’s brother-in-law, through his wife. Jane [Hampton] Meeker was the sister of Anna Marie [Hampton] Denman. I have found the images of the Denmans, Samuel and Anna Marie, in miniatures at the Smithsonian, stay tuned! but today I will just show an advertisement in the Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily. [A friend found this, while researching one of his own ancestors!] The third partner in the firm seems to have been William Parsons Meeker, also painted by Stuart. This young fellow died a premature death in 1812. As he was their agent in England and was lost at sea, perhaps he was returning home over the seas and perished due in some way to the War of 1812. He was the first cousin of Samuel, their fathers were brothers.
Who better to trust, than family members!

William Parson Meeker by Gilbert Stuart, he was lost at sea in 1812

first cousin of Samuel Meeker and business partner

one of his 'finest portraits of men' & "...we cannot but regret that Stuart did not sometimes ... leave us American landscapes"

2011-01-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

Two posts back I described a noted Philadelphian socialite considered a beauty in her time (Mrs. Samuel Blodget); today I introduce her father Dr. William Smith. Lawrence Park says of the Stuart portrait of Dr. Smith, “This is one of the finest portraits of men Stuart painted in this country.” Very fine praise by Park! I also think his description of the painting is interesting so I include it here.

From Lawrence Park:

Doctor William Smith 1727-1803

William Smith was born near Aberdeen, Scotland, and graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1747. He came to America in 1751 as a tutor in the family of Governor Martin on Long Island. In 1753 he was invited to take charge of the newly founded College and Academy of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He first went to England to take clerical orders and after his return was inducted into the office of provost, May, 1754. In 1758 he married Rebecca Moore (1733-1784), daughter of William Moore of Moore Hall, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He revisited England in 1759 and returned the same year vested with the degree of D.D. from the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen and Trinity College, Dublin. The extraordinary activity of Doctor Smith made the college a prominent institution in all the colonies. He was a most active worker in the church and in the field of science, literature and education, taking also part in the discussion of political and social questions. In 1779 he moved to Chestertown, Maryland, became rector of a parish, and in 1782 aided in founding Washington College there, of which he was chosen president. When the charter of the College of Philadelphia (made void in 1779) was restored in 1789 and during the succeeding two years, Dr. Smith was its provost.

~
Philadelphia, 1800. Canvas 37 x 60 inches. This is one of the finest portraits of men Stuart painted in this country. It is a large half-length, nearly twice as wide as it is high. Dr. William Smith is shown seated in a high-backed arm-chair, turned half-way to the left, with his eyes directed to the spectator. His gray hair is thin on top of his head and rather long and wavy over his ears and in back. He wears the gown of a doctor of divinity of Oxford: black, with scarlet hood and a sheer white cambric bib. His left hand rests on the arm of the chair, while his right, which holds a quill pen, rests on some sheets of paper that are lying on the large mahogany writing desk in front of him. There are also four leather-bound books, an inkwell and another quill pen. At the extreme left of the desk stands a theodolite. (This, evidently, in commemoration of Dr. Smith’s association with David Rittenhouse in the memorable observation of the transit of Venus, on June 3, 1769, at Norristown, Pennsylvania.) In the background is a large reddish-brown curtain, looped up in the left half of the picture and giving a glimpse of a most charmingly painted landscape in silvery tones, a scene at the Falls of Schuylkill, where Dr. Smith had a house. Seeing this, writes Charles Henry Hart in the Century Magazine of October, 1908, “we cannot but regret that Stuart did not sometimes turn from his portrait work to the free delineation of open-air nature, and leave us American landscapes full of atmosphere and feeling that we see he knew how to do so well, and in which he would have been no mean rival to his famous English compeers, Wilson and Gainsborough.”

Dr. William Smith by Gilbert Stuart Philadelphia,1800

Mrs. Samuel Blodget (daughter of Dr. Smith)

Philadelphia c.1798 by Gilbert Stuart

collection Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Praise from a Philadelphian! (& sources for research) & ...I am registering Samuel Meeker with the Smithsonian!

2011-01-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

Samuel Meeker, the portrait, was most likely not discovered by Lawrence Park when he was assembling the works of Stuart, as the portrait was taken before his time to California by my late ancestors (the marriage of Carrie Martin of Rahway NJ to Lewis Cory of Fresno, Ca, see provenance). Somehow it seems Samuel belongs in Philadelphia, but, here in California he is, and here he will stay! At least I am bringing his story to light, he would be proud and happy about that! My ancestors who brought him here would be happy with my research, for they thought he was “Major Samuel Meeker” painted by Peale. To have the accurate story is a worthy aim is it not? I have been doing these postings for two years now, with various input from different people. But this particular letter sent to me by email just a few days ago...I appreciate so much! A real Philadelphian, praising my work! Thank you.

And today was special. I am sending in the forms on this portrait to the Smithsonian so that they may register Meeker in their INVENTORY OF AMERICAN PAINTINGS.

The letter now follows:

Hello!

Are you the author of the blog -- GilbertStuart.blogspot.com? I sure hope so. It's a fabulous and an amazing narrative of Philadelphia history!
I applaud your discipline and focus and strategy for exploring your family's heritage.
Who am I? I am a Philadelphian and am well-connected with many cultural heritage organizations and research centers. Indeed, I am forwarding your blog link to them, and encourage you to connect with them as well, as they have the resources and original documentation to serve your endeavor.
Many of these organizations are quickly digitizing their collections, so it might be easier to do more on-line research oforiginal material.
The next time you visit Philadelphia, try to visit these places. They are most helpful and receptive to serious scholars. Many of these research centers are FREE. The Historical Society of PA is the only one, I believe, that charges research fees. Best wishes for the New Year!

Anita Mc K.

1) John Van Horn, Director, The Library Company
http://www.librarycompany.org/about/services.htm
2) Stephen Girard/Girard College and Estate
No doubt your ancestor had many interactions with Girard. Girard College has all of Stephen Girard's records (all of them -- in the thousands) on microfilm at Founders Hall at the College, including correspondence, diaries, bank statements, business records, etc
http://www.ushistory.org/people/girard.htm
See "museum collections" and "archival collections" at this link below:
http://www.girardcollege.com/4398_9771410572/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=50725
3) The McNeil Center at University of PA might connect you with academic scholars who have information about your ancestors. http://www.mceas.org/intro.htm
4) Independence Seaport Museum "archives and library" http://www.phillyseaport.org/Museum_Library.shtml
5) Philadelphia Athenaeum. This museum may have information about your ancestor's homes in Philadelphia. BTW its current exhibit "William Birch: Picturing The American Scene" runs through Jan 11, 2011.
6) The Philadelphia Historic Commission may have materials and photos of the Meeker home in today's Fairmount Park. http://www.phila.gov/historical/contact.html
7) For historic photos check: http://www.brynmawr.edu/iconog/frdr.html
The Philadelphia Free Library Photo collection ... some of the oldest photos of Phila landmarks, homes, businesses, that your ancestor would have known.
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/hip/HIPSearchItem.cfm?searchKey=8153119119&ItemID=pdcc00030
http://libwww.library.phila.gov/hip/HIPLst.cfm?collection=pdcl
http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/archives/phdil/phdil.html
Phillyhistory.org Thousands of photographs of Philadelphia dating from the late 1800s onwards from the city archives and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. http://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Search.aspx

A notable Philadelphian socialite Mrs. Samuel Blodget, distinguished by sprightliness and wit, is painted by Stuart

2010-12-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

Being interested in the time period of Samuel Meeker, I bought a book which was ‘discarded’ from the “Abraham Lincoln Junior High School Library” in Lancaster Pennsylvania. I must have found it online. The book is entitled “Social Life in the Early Republic” (Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, first published 1902) and I suppose I understand why it was eventually discarded, not offering exactly an intensive in-depth analysis of those times, but offering simple anecdotes of various noted families, their connections, and descriptions of dignified and charming individuals. Who married whom, who was renown and why, and inbetween interesting and worthy stories for example on the choice of the site of the new capital after it moved from Philadelphia, the architect and who owned the land etc. Lots of names. So, in the course of reading this book, on the topic of ‘homes and hostelries’, my interest was piqued with the following paragraph (and one can glean an idea of the writing style of the author): “Blodget’s Hotel occupied the site of a portion of the Post-office Department. A house on Sixteenth Street, near what is now Scott Circle, was marked as that of Samuel Blodget in the early plans of Washington; but there is no record of the Blodget family having lived in the new city. Mrs. Blodget, daughter of the Rev. William Smith, first provost of the University of Pennsylvania, was a noted beauty, which reputation her portrait of Gilbert Stuart fully establishes. An independent, original woman Mrs. Blodget seems to have been, not hesitating to express her opinions freely about people and places, and very much amusing a recent acquaintance by announcing that her children “all resembled Mr. Blodget, having small eyes and a comical look.” One of her daughters she classified as “a beauty, but a vixen,” while another, she said, was “not pretty, but a sweet creature.”
I determined to find an image of this exotic bird!

from Lawrence Park
Mrs. Samuel Blodget 1772-1837

Rebecca, daughter of the Reverend William and Rebecca (Moore) Smith of Philadelphia. It is said that she was one of the most admired beauties that ever adorned the drawing room of Philadelphia and as much distinguished by sprightliness and wit as by personal comeliness. In 1792 she married Samuel Blodget, Jr (1755-1814) of Woburn, Ma, Washington, District of Columbia, and afterwards Philadelphia, Pa.

Stuart also painted Rebecca's father the Reverend William Smith, whom he knew well. The stately gentleman has a big nose, similar to his daughter's. Perhaps I will show him next! Stuart "lived in a house owned by Smith's son William Moore Smith in Philadelphia, where at least one sitting with George Washington took place..." (Gilbert Stuart by Barratt and Miles p 227) Rebecca's portrait is unfinished, one has to wonder why in this case.
Husband Samuel Blodget Jr was an architect and assisted Stuart in the design of the backgrounds of his Landsdowne portrait of Washington and that of his father-in-law.

~

Mrs. Samuel Blodget

Philadelphia c.1798 by Gilbert Stuart

collection Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Robert Morris writes a check, Philadelphia 1785.

2010-12-14T14:31:00.000-08:00

Click on the image for a bigger and better view!

See the entry previous to this for more on Robert Morris (1734-1806), American Rebel & Financier who played a major role in arranging the funding of the American Revolution, and setting up our fledgling financial system! Meeker was also involved in banking, getting together with other rich young men to start up and fight for the charter of

The Philadelphia National Bank

(click here for more).

[Similarly to Gilbert Stuart, Morris spent time in debtors prison. Fortune smiled on Samuel Meeker and he did not go to debtors prison, however, he was excluded from the board of the bank in 1807 for exceeding limits of his loans too often.]

Image courtesy of Albert and Ethel Herzstein Library, San Jacinto Museum of History (Houston) and sent to me by a descendent of Mr. Wister, friend and aficionado of this time period, D. McCann

The mercantile world of Samuel Meeker comes alive in a new biography of Robert Morris; & his portrait by Gilbert Stuart

2010-12-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Robert Morris 1734-1806

There is a new biography out on the American rebel/financier; Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye. The following excerpts are from “This Rebel Came Armed with a Balance Sheet”, article from the Wall St Journal Nov 27-28 2010 by John Steele Gordon.

When most people think about the American Revolution, they think about the remarkable ideals that lay behind it and that guide the country still, or they think of the war itself, with Gen. Washington’s men freezing and half-starved at Valley Forge.
What doesn’t come to mind very often is how the Revolution was paid for. “Wars are fought with silver bullets,” according to a Chinese saying, meaning that the side with the most money usually wins. But in the case of the revolution, Great Britain--the richest country in Europe and the possessor of the most advanced financial system--lost despite its silver bullets. And it lost to a ragtag bunch of former colonies that didn’t have a regular money supply, let alone a financial system. Nor did the rebels have the capacity to manufacture arms or gunpowder in any quantity.
Morris, who was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, never fought in battle. But it’s doubtful that the US could have won its independence without him. Born in Liverpool, England, he was the son of a man employed as a tobacco factor handling the British side of the vast trade with the Chesapeake colonies. Morris’s father left for America when Robert was still a toddler. At age 13, the boy followed his father to this country and was soon sent to Philadelphia to study.
Mr. Rappleye has a gift for explaining the complicated financial and mercantile world of the late 18th century, the milieu in which Robert Morris grew up, thrived and, eventually, went broke.
...a great story, told with narrative skill and scholarly authority....
~

I think, in order to better understand the mercantile world that Meeker thrived in, this book is a must for me! I will post relevant followups.

ROBERT MORRIS by Gilbert Stuart Philadelphia, 1795

from Lawrence Park: Robert Morris 1734-1806

A son of Robert Morris, a merchant of Liverpool, England, who immigrated to Maryland in 1747. The son, Robert, married in 1769 Mary White. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1776-1778; prime mover in establishing the Pennsylvania Bank in 1780; founder of the Bank of North America in 1781; United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1789 to 1795; and was imprisoned for debt from 1798 to 1801. He was known as the great financier of the Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson, Goethe, & Weltschmerz

2010-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart

At the moment I am reading "Thomas Jefferson", a bio of Jefferson by Fawn Brodie. I don't have to remind you that Jefferson became President of the United States in 1801. Now, one of the main reasons I, as opposed to other family members, was interested in the Samuel Meeker portrait was because he was a peer of Goethe. As was Jefferson.

Here is a tale of a lovesick Jefferson taken from Brodie's biography: "In April [1764] he barely missed seeing the new Mrs. Ambler [a passion of Jefferson, she married another fellow] at a party at the home of Frances Burwell..., to which he had been invited. "What I high figure I should have cut had I gone!" he wrote to Page. "When I heard who visited you there I thought I had met with the narrowest escape in the world. I wonder how I should have behaved? I am sure I should have been at a great loss." The deprivation for Jefferson in losing Rebecca Burwell was more anguishing than has been acknowledged by some of his biographers. Malone holds that 'Jefferson carried on this rather absurd affair mostly in his imagination.' Nathan Schachner believes 'his passion could not have been too unmanageable, for he made no move to journey down to see her,' and labels his melancholy 'sentimental Weltschmerz.' "

Sentimental Weltschmerz can be roughly translated into an emotional 'ennuie and sadness with the world'~ This feeling and expression of emotion, by men, was increasingly common in the mid 1700s to the early 1800s, culminating in the novel "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" (The Sorrows of Young Werther) by Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1775, when he was 25. In this fiction told in letter-form, Goethe capitalized on the fad of men expressing suffering, emotion, ennuie [this was the time of Sturm und Drang]~ and with the publication of this story of male suffering, Goethe enjoyed huge success as his book became the main topic of the salons, and he became a worldwide celebrity.

"Die Leiden des jungen Werther" gelten den meisten nur als gefühlvoller Liebesroman, und das Werk ist in der Tat einer der schoensten and leidenschaftlichsten Liebesromane der Weltliteratur.

Jefferson was devastated at the death of his wife Martha, he never married again, but his long term relationship with Sally Hemmings raised eyebrows, for she was a slave. Goethe would have approved, or lets say, he would not have disapproved. He knew very well what it was like to transgress social norms.

When I saw this statue in the garden of the villa Mount Pleasant on the Schuylkill, I wondered if it was once in...the villa garden of Fountain Green!

2010-11-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

Below is the William Birch illustration of the country seat of Samuel Meeker on the Schuylkill River Philadelphia (courtesy of the River Print Department & Digital Collections Library Company of Philadelphia), the famed estate called Fountain Green. The estate, oringially comprising over 300 acres when first deeded to the Mifflin family by British royalty, was by now only about 25 acres but still maintaining substantial financial worth, considering its proximity to the river, and amid sizable increases in the price of real estate post revolution. (The canal was new and was not finished at the time. I have yet to understand the reason why this canal was built in the first place, and then taken away.) Just below the full depiction of Fountain Green is, in detail, the statue adorning the garden grounds. Look at it closely. Does it not look eerily similar to the statue I photographed in the garden of the neighboring villa Mount Pleasant, this summer? Here is my theory. When the villa Fountain Green burned, sometime in the 1870s, the owners of neighboring Mount Pleasant either bought at auction, or salvaged, the statue and put it in their garden. Is it an original piece from Samuel Meeker's days? I think it would be very difficult to find out... I will try! But, I think it is.

statue presently in the front garden of Mount Pleasant...

On the south side of Fountain Green was The Cliffs, an unbelievably sad story of a once stately country villa!

2010-10-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

“Fountain Green, the seat next beyond the Cliffs, originally belonged to Samuel Mifflin.... The grounds ran over to what was called Mifflin’s Lane. Mr. Mifflin died in 1781, and Samuel Meeker became the owner” (... from History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 by T Scharf, T Westcott pub L.H. Everts & Co. Philadelphia 1884). ...this was the first ever info I found that my guy, Samuel Meeker merchant of Philadelphia and my ancestor, owned a country estate near Philadelphia. Wowsie! According to this (amazing) description, for a long time I thought Fountain Green was located high on some cliffs overlooking the Schuylkill River (I thought these cliffs provided the caves for Engel & Wolf lager beer brewery, all very logical!). Later I was astounded, and totally exhilarated, to find Samuel’s house Fountain Green illustrated by William Birch! But one thing, it seemed so close, level to the water, and not on some cliffs. Most likely an artist’s twist on the reality.... hmmmm. A few years later, and I discovered that the Cliffs was actually a house!

In the last entry I established that on the north side of Fountain Green was the neighboring estate called Mount Pleasant built by sea captain John Macpherson in 1763. On the other side of where Fountain Green used to be, is the house called the Cliffs. The Cliffs was built in 1753 by Philadelphia merchant Joshua Fisher, a Quaker (1707-1783). Like Mount Pleasant and Fountain Green, the estate surrounding the house included a farm, although in general, life in this region was not an agrarian economy. Many farmed and sold their crops, but capital stemmed mainly from trade, shipping, law, banking and real estate (Meeker excelled at a number of these!)

Joshua Fisher was the grandson of John Fisher who came to America on board the "Welcome" with William Penn. He married Sarah Rowland, and as a young man started a hat-making business using the locally plentiful animal skins (click here for the portrait of Mr. Sturgis who became rich from the hat (& opium!) business). The trade in animal pelts flourished and eventually Joshua started a business with his sons called "Joshua Fisher & Sons". Customers were able to order items from a catalogue such as porcelain, silverware, brass pulls for dressers, and every other imaginable type of merchandise. The business prospered because customers could receive reasonably priced goods within weeks. Joshua became wealthy, and started the first packet line of ships to sail regularly between Philadelphia andLondon.
Moving his family to downtown Philadelphia in 1746, Joshua built the Cliffs as a country getaway for the summers (for fun and to get away from the fever epidemics which would sweep through the city). It signaled his socioeconomic “arrival” and showcased his newfound wealth.
The house remained in the Fisher family for more than 100 years until the Fairmount Park Commission purchased it (and all the other villas in the confines of the ‘new’ park, an early example of eminent domain?) in 1868. The house was rented and maintained until the 1960s when it became vacant. The house had a substantial amount of woodwork and paneling. It was taken over and repaired in the 1960s by the Shackamaxon Society, a local civic group.
Incredibly, the Cliffs was vandalized in the 1970s & 80s, possibly due to publicity that the Fairmount Park Commission allowed city officials to live in the park's 45 historic houses rent-free. As a result of the news stories, the Park Commission decided to charge rent, but renters could not be found for some of the houses. Those that were occupied were thereby protected and maintained. The Cliffs was unoccupied from 1970, and due to a lack of funds, neither the Park Commission nor the Shackamaxon Society could maintain it.
The Cliffs burned on February 22, 1986, due to vandalism and arson. Firefighters were unable to extinguish the fire because their heavy trucks sank in the clay earth surrounding the house. The clay had been trucked into the site in order to cover an area near the house used as a dump for refuse from various municipal construction projects. (info courtesy of wiki, as is the photo of the ruin)

What a terribly sad fate! Fountain Green burned too, to the ground.

Satellite image of The Cliffs by googleearth, this is how it is today!

I knew I only had 3 days in Philadelphia, to explore and to research, but one of the things I really wanted to do was find this burnt out shell, so close to Fountain Green, which would have meant slashing my way through brush and bramble! In the satellite image, the road is below the railroad tracks, and the tracks are set up high. With limited time and no one to join me in such an excursion, I did the less adventurous route, and took an appropriate tour of Mount Pleasant. In the next entry, I will show the satellite view of all three properties.

Mount Pleasant, the neighboring country estate to Fountain Green, on the Schuylkill River

2010-10-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Mount Pleasant, splendid villa about a 10 min walk from where Fountain Green used to be.

ddd

In August I visited Philadelphia and was able to further my sleuthing of Meeker, and in particular I found out more about his country estate Fountain Green on the Schuylkill River, which he was able to purchase from the Mifflin family through a bank auction in 1799. There seems to be some confusion about the location of Fountain Green because with time, Governor Mifflin is alleged to have live there (more on this topic later.) The location of Fountain Green is now pinned down. If one looks at the map of Fairmount Park along the banks of the Schuylkill River, running through the center of Philly, Fountain Green was between Mount Pleasant (pictured above) and a country home called the Cliffs, both of which still exist; however the Cliffs is in ruins and can not be seen. But at least I was able to visit Mount Pleasant, just slightly past where Fountain Green was once located, and up a small hill. The road running up this hill leading to Mount Pleasant is now called Fountain Green Drive.

The home was closed, but was graciously opened up for me and my friend Susan (see Susan's blog on Philly beauty Rebecca Gratz). In 1761 this land was aquired by a sea captain named Capt. John Macpherson who made a fortune in a short amount of time in the French and Indian War. When the war ended in 1763 Macpherson was ready to make an appropriate display of his wealth and social prestige, and built Mount Pleasant which was described by John Adams as “the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania.” He developed his estate with fields for sheep and cows, orchards, and a large, Scottish-style walled garden in which he grew such luxuries as asparagus, strawberries, and artichokes. Here he lived with wife and children for a while (becoming estranged from his wife, a son died in the Am Rev), renting it during periods of financial difficulty, and finally sold it in 1779. After changing hands several times, in 1791 it was sold to General Jonathan Williams (1751-1815). He was a great nephew of Benjamin Franklin, was chief of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and first superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He directed the fortification of New York Harbor, and was active in the defense of the Delaware in the War of 1812. In his absence, his wife Mariamne was left in charge of Mount Pleasant and the farm. The Williams family lived there until the City of Philadelphia bought the property in 1869 and it became part of Fairmount Park.

As Meeker bought Fountain Green in 1799, eight years after Mount Pleasant was bought by Gen Williams, these two families would have been neighbors. Fountain Green at this time comprised 2 parcels; a smaller part along the river, and a much larger part which neighbored the Williams estate, extending away from the river.

This statue is in the garden of Mount Pleasant. I noticed it right away.

The reason why.........stay tuned!

James Madison finishes the Constitution in September 1787, an early Republican and a father of American Politics

2010-09-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

James Madison by Gibert Stuart:

the portrait was painted for the Honorable James Bowdoin and presented by him to Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution, reflecting his role in planning, writing and ratifying the nation's fundamental law. This should be his month: The Constitutional Convention, where he starred, finished the document in September 1787. And Congress sent the amendments that became the Bill of Rights—which Madison also played a major role in shaping—to the states in September 1789.
But Madison has another claim on our attention. He is the father of American politics as we know it.
Madison helped establish America's first political party, the Republicans. In 1791, as a representative from Virginia, he joined Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on a trip through upstate NY and New England, supposedly collecting biological specimens for the American Philosophical Society but actually collecting political allies for themselves. The politician they wished to combat, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, already wielded great power through his office, and hence he was somewhat slower to organize a party; when he did, it took the name Federalists.
Madison and Jefferson built better than Hamilton: the Federalists disappeared as a national party in 1816, while the old Republicans march on today as the Democrats. (The modern GOP is an unrelated organization established in 1854.)
Madison helped found the first party newspaper, the National Gazette. He recruited the paper’s first editor, Philip Freneau, a versifier and college chum. Jefferson gave Freneau a nominal job as a translator in the State Dept and in his free time Freneau smacked Hamilton in prose. Madison’s interest in newspapers flowed from his interest in the power of public opinion. “Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments,” he wrote in a December 1791 National Gazette essay, “...a circulation of newspapers throughout the entire body of the people...is favorable to liberty.” Then “every good citizen will be...a sentinel over the rights of the people.”

Drowning in both media and poll data today, we understand the importance of regularly measuring public opinion. But in the early republic consulting public opinion was a new concept.
The Federalists had little use for it. They thought the people should rule at the polls, then let the victors do their best until the next election. Madison foresaw, and applauded, our world of 24/7 news, comment and pulse-taking before it existed.
Madison belonged to an early form of the political machine, the dynasty. America had revolted against George III and the House of Hanover, but the dynastic temptation lingered on. Federalist John Adams, our second president, saw his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, become the sixth president. But the Adamses were unpopular one-termers. Between them stretched the Virginia Dynasty—two terms of Jefferson, two terms of Madison, two terms of James Monroe—24 years of government by friends and neighbors.The Adams—and the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons in our day—had dynasties of blood and marriage. Jefferson, Madison and Monroe made a dynasty of ideological brotherhood.

Not that Madison ignored the political importance of marriage. After an unhappy courtship in his early 30s, he left romance alone until he was 43, when he married a pretty widow, Dolley Payne Todd (click here for more). When Madison took office as Secretary of State (1801) and as president in 1809, Dolley Madison became more than a hostess. She was a political wife, America’s first: half a campaign tag-team, and often the better half. Gregarious and outgoing, she completed her husband’s personality, which was shy and stiff except with intimates.
Martha Washington, the first First Lady, was beloved but domestic; Abigail Adams, the second, was political but abrasive. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was a widower. As one US senator put it, only Madison had “a wife to aid in his pretensions.”
Madison succeeded as a politial innovator because he was good at politics. He did what came naturally to him: agenda-setting, committee work, parliamentary maneuvering. He grew up in a family as large as an oyster bed—six siblings who survived childhood, numerous nieces, nephews and cousins—good training for a future legislator.
He worked at what didn’t come naturally; public speaking and campaigning. His voice was weak; time and again, note takers at debates he participated in left blanks in his remarks or simply gave up, becuase Mr. Madison “could not be distinctly heard.” Yet when circumstances required it, he took on the flamboyant Patrick Henry and once tangled with his friend Monroe in the open air of a snow storm so bitter he got frost bite on his nose. He won both debates.
Madison played well with others. He worked with George Washington, profiting from his charisma and judgment, and before they fell out with Hamilton, profiting from his exuberance. (Hamilton tapped Madison to contribute to the Federalists papers, which was initially Hamilton’s project; Madison wrote 29 of the 85 essays.) As President, he learned something about money and the world from his Treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin. He was a great man who was not afraid of assisting or deferring to other great men (another legacy of his tight family life.) He also worked with the less-than-great; hatchet-men, gossips, wire-pullers. They do the work of politics too. They are part of the game. James Madison helped build a republic. He was also an ambitious party activist who counted votes, stumped, spoke, scratched backs and (when necessary) stabbed them. He would not be afraid of the contrast, for his deepest thinking told him that the architects of liberty had to understand and sometimes use the ordinary political materials of ambition and self-advancement to ensure that this republic would endure.

an article by Richard Brookhiser

travelling back to my roots

2010-08-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Thats MY ROOM!!!

On Aug 22 I will arrive in Philadelphia, for the first time in my life. So much to do, so little time! Only 3 days in the city, for really the trip is a highschool reunion taking place in Virginia Beach (my highschool, International School Bangkok, meets every two years for all those that attended the school.) So I am fitting in this little side trip. Hope to find "Fountain Green" in Fairmount Park although it is long gone, but the ruins of the "Cliffs" still remain, the "house next door". Will I have to cut my way through bush and bramble? And to think Fountain Green, the 300 acre estate owned for so many generations by the Mifflin family, was once so famous! and now gone to dust, ...and forgotton. I wonder what happened to the natural spring fountain, for which the house was named! Will be looking for documents on my ancestor, Samuel Meeker.
Well hey, yes, the room with a view is expensive! But worth it, don't you think?!!!!

The semblance slays me. Pops and Samuel.

2010-07-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

My grandfather Benjamin Hyde Cory (1896-1983). Born in Fresno, Ca.
Here he is as a young man, most likely during his undergrad years at Princeton. He later graduated from Harvard Law and returned to California. Add about 20 years, turn his face in the same direction as Meeker.
The lips, the nose, the forehead, the sleepy lidded eyes. Bit of a wave to the hair. His great great grandmother was Phoebe Meeker, twin sister of Samuel.

July 4th, 1811: "The first regiment of the Pennsylvania Cavalry--always ready in the defence of their country's rights!"

2010-07-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

In my everongoing sleuthing on my ancestor Samuel Meeker, I have discovered that most likely he left the family home of the Westfields NJ for residence in Philadelphia as early as 1787, when he was 24. Why? Possibly to join the army! I now know that in that year he was a private in the 'First Company, Second City Battalion, Colonel James Read.' Within 6 years he started his own business (surely with the help of family money, his father [aka Captain Samuel Meeker] could be considered wealthy as he owned a travelling chair--no easy bank lending back then!), a partnership with Alexander Cochran who was the husband of Samuel's twin sister (my gt gt gt gt grandmother) Phebe.
Phebe was married to Mr. Alexander Cochran on Feb. 26, 1792 in the prominent “Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.”
Notably the marriage, as many marriages of well-to-do citizens in Philadelphia at this time, was recorded in the “Centinel.”
Who knows which came first, Phebe's divorce or the breakup of this partnership, but in September of 1797 the Meeker Cochran business was dissolved. (I am descended from Phebe's second marriage to Brookfield). A new business partnership Meeker, Denman & Co was formed and located at No. 20 South Front St, Philadelphia.

Yet during all of these busy and tumultuous years, Meeker rose through the ranks to finally become captain of the Third City Troop, or "Volunteer Greens"--part of a voluntary cavalry consisting of nearly three hundred men, and a proud remnant of the revolutionary army. By the summer of 1811, with war against the mother country looming on the horizon (War of 1812, recall that Stuart's portrait of Washington was saved from being burned by the British by Dolly Madison!), the air was electrified with a military spirit. On the 4th of July, 1811, Captain Samuel Meeker proudly proclaimed in a toast in front of the troops:

"The first regiment of the Pennsylvania Cavalry--always ready in the defence of their country's rights!"

The Second Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry W. A. Newman Dorland

The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 54, No. 2 (1930), pp. 175-185

Mrs. Andrew Sigourney (the random monthly pick)

2010-07-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Andrew Sigourney
Gilbert Stuart, Boston c.1820

copied from Lawrence Park volume IV

from Lawrence Park:
Mrs. Andrew Sigourney
1765-1843

She was Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Howell Williams (q.v.) of Roxbury and Noddle’s Island, Massachusetts, by his wife, Elizabeth Bell. She married in 1797 Andrew Sigourney (1766-1820) of Boston.

Boston, c. 1820. She is shown nearly half-length, seated, slightly turned to the left, with her gray-blue eyes gazing at the spectator, in an Empire armchair upholstered in a figured stuff of brownish-green tones. Upon her head, which is tipped slightly forward, is a large turban of white dotted muslin, beneath which is a mass of tight curls of dark brown hair covering her temples and the sides of her forehead. Her face is thin, with delicate features and high cheek bones, and her complexion is pink and fair. The right ear does not show, but in her left is an earring of two carnelians, one hung above the other, and both encircled with small pearls. Her black silk, long-sleeved dress is open at the throat, and edged with black silk ruffles, while the neck opening is filled in with a white starched ruffled fichu. A red shawl, fallen from her shoulders, surrounds her. The hands are not shown. The background is plain and of amber-tones.

In full color!

I was not able to find much about this self-confident looking lady. Her husband seems to have been active as a Freemason, and involved with the Boston theatre. Note that this portrait was done some 17 years after Meeker's, Stuart has simplified the background (no drapery, sky) and dropped the hands. Makes (dollars &) sense, since I don't think he liked to paint hands.

Most widely held works by Andrew Sigourney
Constitution of the Grand Lodge of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. : Adopted anno lucis by Freemasons( Book )1 edition published in 1811 in English and held by 1 library worldwide
Receipt book of Andrew Sigourney, 1803-1811 by Andrew Sigourney in English and held by 1 library worldwide Account book with hand written notices dated and signed by Andrew, Daniel or Elisha Sigourney stating that they received the rent for the lobby of the Boston Theatre. The rent by paid by Stephen North from 1803 to 1809 and by Eben Oliver from 1809 to 1811.

Who commissioned the Lansdown portrait of George Washington? Why, the belle of Philly, Anne Willing Bingham! & the meaning of "Landsdown"

2010-06-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Anne Willing Bingham 1797 by Gilbert Stuart in private collection

wearing a pendant portrait of her husband and acclaimed by Abigail Adams as "taken altogether... the finest woman I ever saw."

The Landsdown portrait of George Washington

by Gilbert Stuart

In the post-Revolutionary period, Anne Willing Bingham became the arbiter of fashion and intellectual conversation at her home in Philadelphia. “....the house [not Landsdown] along with its formal gardens ocupied most of the ground west to Fourth Street and north to Willing’s Alley. Its marble stairs among similar features gave the house the “Roman air” now in fashion. [Note; recall the Roman statues in the garden of Fountain Green, country estate of Meeker?] ‘The chairs in the drawing-room were from Seddon’s in London of the newest taste, the back in the form of a lyre, with festoons, of yellow and crimson silk. The curtains of the room a festoon of the same. The carpet, one of Moore’s most expensive patterns. The room papered in the French taste, after the style of the Vatican in Rome’ The mirrors lining the parlors reflected social gatherings rivaling in prestige those of the president’s mansion itself.” {quote from “Houses and Early Life in Philadelphia” by Grant Miles Simon}

(con.) The lady of the house, Anne Willing Bingham, had married in 1780, when she was sixteen and her husband twenty-eight. From 1783-1786 the Binghams had traveled in England and on the continent, where Anne captivated and was captivated by the courts of St. Jame’s, Versailles, and the Hague. Rich, attractive, intelligent, shrewd, witty, and elegantly dressed, Mrs. Bingham was welcomed to the fashionable salons of the European capitals and began to form the notion of presiding over a salon of her own in Philadelphia." (from “Philadelphia a 300-year history” W.W. Norton & Co. N.Y. 1982)

Landsdown country estate

Lansdown (from “Country seats of the United States” William Russell Birch) “Lies upon the bank of the Pastoral Schuylkill, a stream of peculiar beauty, deservedly the delight and boast of the shores it fertilizes. The house was built upon a handsome and correct plan by the former governor Penn. .... William Bingham and wife, Anne (nee Willing) rented Landsdown as their country house in the summers. The Binghams were among the wealthiest citizens of the new republic and central figures in the “Federalist Court” of George Washington’s tenure in office in Philadelphia. They purchased the property in 1797 at a sheriff’s sale [Note; Meeker also bought Fountain Green on the banks of the Schuylkill at auction in 1799 upon financial distress of the previous owner] after speculator James Greenleaf had to liquidate assets to meet his creditor’s demands. ......The house was largely destroyed by fire in the middle of the nineteenth century and was demolished completely before the Centennial.”

an AHA moment. (no sunscreen, etc)

2010-06-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was nothing special or out of the ordinary, as usual watching the news on a Fri. eve (love the Shields-Brooks match up on the PBS Nightly report) when my brother Paul's girlfriend gave me a call. She wanted to drop by to show me some photoportraits of herself she had done in celebration of her 50ieth. Very nice! A lady after my heart for besides being fit (yet still brought over MaryAnn's ice cream), we ended up talking about loving things of the past and soon enough were talking about Meeker who hangs on my livingroom wall. She says, "There are two different colors in the face." and I am thinking of my response which would have been something along the lines of well yes Stuart was known for his ability to achieve translucence of the skin...............when she adds "Like, he was wearing a hat!".

I had never thought of it before, as obvious a point as it is!!! Yes, so many of Stuart's male sitters have the ruddy cheeks and whitish forehead; exactly, men were outside so much of the time, on horseback when going from one place to another thereby their hat was most likely a daily necessity (and no sun screen!), the women were inside, or when outside with hats/parasols so their faces are uniformly pale (or with the delicate blush).... and Stuart depicted the exact reality as was his norm....

Mrs. TIMOTHY PICKERING (the random monthly pick)

2010-06-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Rebecca White, aka Mrs. Timothy Pickering, was born in England and came over to this country in 1765 at age 11. Eleven years later (1776) she married Col. Timothy Pickering~a graduate of Harvard in 1763, admitted to the bar in 1768, & joined Washington's army in 1777. This prominent gentleman was Secretary of War in 1795, and was a Massachusetts state senator from 1803-1811.

The couple had 10 children, 8 sons and the two youngest were daughters.

"THERE is no more beautiful example of Stuart's skill than this portrait of Mrs. Timothy Pickering, painted between 1816 and 1818. Mrs. Pickering is represented seated in so natural an attitude that there is no suggestion of being "posed." Her black silk gown with folds of soft muslin about the throat, her cap of the same sheer material, trimmed with lace, and the ermine-bordered mantle of a delicious shade of old rose color which has fallen from her shoulders, are all painted with a care and finish seldom bestowed by Stuart upon the accessories of his portraits, while on the finely modeled face with its delicate flesh-tones his brush has evidently lingered with loving touch."

Masters in Art; a series of illustrated monographs. Bates and Guild Co, Boston 1906. p 37

From Lawrence Park:

Boston. Begun in 1816 and finished in 1818. Half-length, seated slightly to the right, in a carved gilded Empire chair, with her brown eyes to the spectator. Her hair is completely hidden by a white lace-trimmed handkerchief worn as a turban. She wears a black silk dress with a white muslin kerchief open at the throat, showing a necklace of pearls, and fastened with a lozenge-shaped ruby pin; an old rose velvet cloak trimmed with ermine surrounds her body and lies in folds on her lap, where it is held by her right hand, on the third finger of which is a gold ring. The backgound is plain, of greenish-brown and gray tones, with a narrow pilaster showing at the right.

Master Clarke, a special Stuart, sells at auction; how much?

2010-05-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Master Clarke

By Gilbert Stuart, England 1783-4,

originally in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ferragamo, sold on May 19 to new owners

On May 19 a very special Stuart portrait was up for auction at Sotheby's spring sale of American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture. -- Stuart's earlier English paintings were not as swiftly and monotonely produced as they were in later years in America, when Stuart's intent was to streamline income. Those days in England ie when he was studying under Benjamin West, was the time in which he wished to impress the general public/art world/aristocracy with his extraordinary talent. So the portraits are more detailed, expansive and original; this particular portrait is of the son of Richard Hall Clarke of Bridwell, Halberton and his wife, a celebrated beauty. The young boy is posed among the trees in the park of his family home, holding a long bow and arrow, the sport of archery being de rigeur in the upper-class at the time. It is not clear whether he knows what to do with the gear.

So how much did it sell for?
$422,500

If you need more money, get together with cronies and create a bank.

2010-05-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

Finance, Then and Now

by Elizabeth Ahrens-Kley

The recent economic rescue plans undertaken by the U.S. government to stave off fiscal calamity, including a $787 billion stimulus in September '08, followed less than two years later by an eye-popping $955 billion from the Europeans and IMF to prop up indebted Euro nations, makes one believe that governments around the world are not hesitating in treating tax dollars as gambling chips, seemingly without much monetary value. Losing the poker game simply means the chips are lost! Winning simply means buying time to allow debt-plagued countries to recover enough to build some fiscal and monetary credibility. George Washington, whose image by American portrait artist Gilbert Stuart is on the one dollar bill, surely would be turning as green as the color of the bill at these vast and fearsome sums. Lest history be not forgotton, a brief glimpse back at the state of banking in Philadelphia, the bustling port and capital city of America at the turn of the 19th century, will shed light into the vast gulf existing between the banking institutions of then, and now. In particular, the story of Samuel Meeker’s “overborrowing” is of interest.

Complex collateralized debt obligations did not exist, nor did savings banks, or trust and loan companies. Nor commercial banks. The Fed was not established until 1913.
In the 1780s the first American banks were small state banks (at this time there were three: Philadelphia, New York, and Boston), and there was no central banking system. With the adoption of the new constitution, the financial system was substantially reformed beginning 1788, culminating in the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in 1791 endowed with the role of aiding federal finanacial operations and leading the way to development of a US banking system. The bank was capitalized at a then whopping $10 million, the state banks at that time were only capitalized at $1 million or less. Only the First Bank of the United States was nationwide and while servicing the large government debt, the smaller state banks commonly lent capital for local and regional business, trade, and infrastructure—from the three existing state banks in 1790, the number grew to 28 by 1800, all in New England and the Middle Atlantic states.

1803 was a year in which not only Philadelphia experienced an accelerating prosperity, it was also a momentous year in the life of Samuel Meeker (1763-1831), scion of a well-known prominent family from New Jersey. Transplanted to Philadelphia in the early 1790s in search of opportunity, he was one of a group of lesser known but ambitious young men willing to challenge the restrictive lending practices of the small group of old established families which controlled the field of finance at this time in the capital. The general complaint was that money was chiefly locked into the hands of these relatively few conservative individuals, who were mainly beholden to investors in England, who lent too little locally and most often to only a favored few, substantially restricting growth of commerce; and private lenders charged much too exorbitant rates of interest. Meeker was one of these progressive-minded citizens, this group of enthusiastic amateurs inexperienced in the profession of banking, but willing to make their own gamble that the time was ripe to exploit economic potential; by establishing a new line of credit, at reasonable rates of interest, to supplement the three other banks then dominating the commercial activity of the city. These individuals, leaders responding with creative energy to the current business climate in Philadelphia (still the country’s largest and busiest port) gathered together to draw up a plan for a new Bank.

Handsome, energetic and athletic (upstanding member of the Gloucester Fox-Hunting Club!) & understanding that new avenues of capital would help lubricate the wheels of commerce and prosperity in the capital, while also benefitting his own trading business Meeker, Denman & Co., Meeker was one of sixteen directors elected to the board of the new “Philadelphia National Bank” in the summer of 1803. A subscription book was opened for the sale of stock, the total amount of the Bank’s stock was subscribed and was placed at one million dollars. Organization of the bank proceeded rapidly, the board (including Meeker) met daily, the collected money was deposited in a box at the Bank of Pennsylvania. “A proper set of books, stationery, scales, weights, shovels and other materials” were ordered and steps were taken toward the drafting of rules and regulations. A few months later in the fall, Meeker’s own business received the first loan from the Philadelphia National Bank. Not only did Meeker receive the first loan from the new bank in 1803, he and his twin sister Phebe turned 40, both these circumstances surely providing the inspiration for what transpired next. Signalling acheivement at joining the ranks of the top social and financial elite, Meeker commissioned his portrait to be done by the premier portrait artist of the day, Gilbert Stuart, to be given as a gift to his beloved sister. Since the twins’ birthday was in the summer, surely a lavish and extravagent party was thrown to celebrate the event at Meeker’s well-known country estate on the banks of the Schuylkill River, Fountain Green. Here at this two-story stone house with commodious wings built to each side the guests would arrive by horse, dine on steak butchered from cows fed in the stalls on the property, and treated to the finest fruits and vegetables grown in the highly cultivated gardens. What a fabulous excuse to leave the hot and humid city in the summer (and to escape the periodic fevers), to mingle with many of the finest citizens of the city, and view the unveiling of a new Stuart portrait!

Epilogue: it is ironic to note that only by special vote of the board could a loan by the Philadelphia National Bank be made of more than thirty thousand dollars, and that this vote was only accorded to the directors. Meeker apparently found it impossible to limit his own loans from the bank on numerous occasions, leading to his exclusion from the board in 1807. Possibly Meeker’s financial dealings were too much like gambling.

"Wall St" is divided from "Main Street" version 1829

2010-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

President Jackson declares war on the Bank of the United States

After Jackson’s first annual message to Congress in 1829, claiming that the Bank of the United States had failed in its requirement to “establish a sound and uniform currency”, the directors of The Philadelphia Bank feared disastrous results to the banking community if the Bank of the United States was forced to wind up its affairs.
Jackson was reflecting an overal populist view which was antagonistic to banks, informing Mr. Biddle (President of the Bank of the United States since 1823); “I do not dislike your Bank any more than all banks. But ever since I read the history of the South Sea bubble, I have been afraid of banks.”

The Philadelphia National Bank (for Meeker's role in the establishment of this bank click here) is against these actions by the federal government:

“The advantages which have resulted to the country from the establishment of an institution which has aided the fiscal operations of the Government in the collection and distribution of the public funds, furnished a sound circulating medium which may be considered at par in all parts of the Union, facilitated the general operations of trade and commerce, and which has by the diffusion of its capital advanced the prosperity of the people, are so obvious to all who have witnessed its operations, as to render it unnecessary to urge them in detail upon your consideration.” p64

Panic!

Threat of closure by the federal government, and the actions by Jackson of removal of the federal deposits from the Bank of the United States, caused a tightening of credit in the economy and precipitated an overall panic, and by 1833 these actions were proving ruinous to commerce. The overall ensuing recession however caused other banks to extend their loan portfolios to relieve the pressure. Despite the panic,the thirties were years of great activity in the Philadelphia money market. New organizations had come on the scene; savings banks, trust companies, and loan companies. Bank capital proved insufficient, and most institutions attempted to borrow additional funds....in 1836 the Philadelphia bank tried to borrow half a million dollars in London with the assurance that ‘the business of the Bank is increasing and its affairs are properous,’ ...p66 (This did not succeed).

Ensuing inflation & the monetary system is impaired
After the loss of the government deposits in 1833, the Bank of the United States no longer had the means of regulating credit extension by the state banks, and inflation proceeded apace. It was an ominous fact that by spring, 1834, the notes of banks situated in the surrounding communities were circulating in Philadelphia at a discount. Once again, the monetary system of the United States had been wrecked, and a uniform currency had been replaced by a medley of “bank rags.” p67

quotes are from The Philadelphia National Bank 1803-1953 by Nicholas B. Wainwright, Wm F. Fell Co, Philadelphia 1953

Biddle vs. Jackson

..."In 1823, the Biddles were prosperous, having made money in real estate (a Biddle ancestor had been a member of the Proprietors), and influential, having been Free Quakers who sided with the Revolution. So, Nicholas Biddle became the president of the Second [US] Bank at 4th and Chestnut. Like all banks, he was given the ability to create money through taking deposits and loaning them out. Since in this process, two people (the depositor and the borrower) think they have the same money, there is effectively twice as much of it -- unless both actually demand it at the same time. If a bank has Federal revenues on deposit, as Biddle did, it is fairly easy for a politically active banker to predict whether that large depositor is likely to withdraw it. Political deposits seemingly make a bank stronger and safer, unless the banker has a fight with a politician. That's banking, but Biddle also became a central banker.... ......"

Stuart's "Astor" is demoted to "Gentleman" ! (trickery in the world of art?)

2010-05-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

GILBERT STUART

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN

On May 9 2009 I posted an entry on Stuart's portrait of John Jacob Astor, about to be autioned at Soetheby's, with an estimated fetching price of only $75,000-$100,000 ("For a trifling sum of money)".

It turns out that the identification of this particular sitter as an "Astor" was done without the blessings of the professionals. The above portrait was identifed as John Jacob Astor "based only" on its similarity to another existant portrait of Mr. Astor! It seems to me that Soetheby's is supposed to check out the authenticity of each piece that comes under its hammer, and in fact perhaps that is what happened in this case. This "Portrait of a Gentleman", which the above portrait is now more humbly termed, is now once again up for grabs at auction, but at a much more modest price.

Explanation courtesy of Soetheby's;

CATALOGUE NOTE

This portrait by Gilbert Stuart had been previously identified as a portrait of John Jacob Astor, the first multimillionaire in American history. Gilbert Stuart was commissioned to paint Astor's portrait and according to Lawrence Park, the Gilbert Stuart scholar who published the 1926 four volume catalogue raisonné, he painted two versions (numbers 37 and 38 in Park's catalogue). Mr. Park identifies number 37 as the portrait that was purchased in 1909 through Charles Henry Hart for the collection of The Brook, a prominent men's club in New York City. Number 38 in Park is listed as the 2nd portrait of Astor, and the likeness Astor himself enjoyed. This portrait still remains in the Astor family today and was the subject of several lithographs after the painting. The present portrait was identified as a portrait of Astor based on its similarity to the portrait at The Brook. Further research at the Frick Art Library suggests that this portrait, and another portrait in the collection of the Van Cortlandt family, are both of a Mr. Badcock. The present work was formerly in the collection of a General Brigadier Badcock so it is possible that it descended in the family of the sitter.

Now, this portrait is currently only estimated to bring 40,000 - 60,000 USD.

Gee, too bad for the owners. Please NOTE here the importance of establishing a failsafe providence, or ownership history, of a Stuart portrait. This would have aided a quick determination of who the sitter is.

It should be added that a current expert on Gilbert Stuart, Ellen Miles (National Portrait Gallery), helped to rectify this minor misunderstanding.

A new, handsome young Banker!

2010-04-24T20:01:00.001-07:00

This is getting a bit ahead in the story, for Meeker began to amass his wealth well before having a hand in the establishment of The Philadelphia National Bank (more on that later). But I would like to focus on this part of his career, because banking (now so much in the news where "Wall St" is divided from "Main Street") is ..... such a vastly different beast now compared to banking in those days, in the young America.....

Meeker was among the first directors, I imagine this group of lesser known young men formed as they had money to lend, and new lines of credit were very much in demand. At this time there were only three banks in Philadelphia, and these three banks, run primarily by old established families, dominated Philadelphia's commerce. The new America was flourishing, capital was available and the Lousiana Purchase had opened up vast new opportunities. The entrenched barriers errected by the old Philadelphia aristocracy were about to be torn down...

♠

The year is 1803. The year that Stuart painted Samuel Meeker. Boom times!

♠

“There were other directors who served on the Bank’s first boards whose services were also vital. Matthew Lawler...was a former privateersman of Revolutionary experience, and, as previously noted, was mayor of Philadelphia in 1803. A leader in the Bank’s fight for a charter was Israel Israel, sheriff of Philadelphia. Another who assisted in that task and who remained for some years a most active member was Samuel Meeker, a leading merchant and owner of a renowned country estate called Fountain Green.” p 18

♠

The Philadelphia Bank

a print published in 1828 by William Birch

(also illustrator of Fountain Green)

"The banking room, handsomely divided into various compartments, was twenty feet high, its ceiling embellished with moldings and tracery, 'ornaments of the 14th century.' Above the door to the money vault was carved the head of a dog (emblem of fidelity) in the act of guarding a pile of dollars, upon which the head rested. Four great windows with pointed arches rich with tracery lighted the room. " p 24

excerpts from The Philadelphia National Bank 1803-1953;

by Nicholas B. Wainright

Wm, F. Fell Co. Printers Philadelphia 1953

more on Rachel: "Count Germond ... raved all night about her beauty ..."

2010-04-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Solomon Moses (Rachel Gratz) (detail from the original portrait by GS)

In the post previous to this, I briefly described Rachel and her sister Rebecca, both known as beauties in their time in the city of Philadelphia. Her husband, Solomon Moses, surely played an appropriate role in the wooing and winning of this beautiful young lady. While investigating this young couple, I came across a blog by Susan, who has studied the family from original documents. Original documentation stemming from the sitters of Stuart are outside of the realm of this blog (except for my Samuel Meeker & co.), but Susan has kindly granted permission to quote a bit from her most recent post. Hopefully more detail on Solomon and his wife Rachel will come to light in Susan's blog.

The following excerpt below is shown here with permission taken from the blog "Rebecca Gratz & 19th-Century America", click here to be taken to the full post on Rachel, and leisurely enjoy the story of this Philadelphian family and life in the CITY in much much more detail!

"Rachel was the youngest of the three Gratz sisters still at home at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and with her mass of red-gold hair and hazel eyes, she was considered the beauty of the family. Visiting in New York in 1800, she was seen at the theater by a Count Germond who raved all night about her beauty and spent the next two days wangling an introduction (the acquaintance went no further). Rebecca received compliments from those who had met her, but only Rachel caused flutters from across the room.

Unlike her older sisters Sarah and Rebecca who were "sensible" women, Rachel was under the rule of what the age called "sensibility," a term which would translate today to "emotions and affections." Her disposition served to enhance her physical beauty........... "

♥

The Gratz beauties of Philadelphia and the Stuart portrait of their mother

2010-04-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

My last monthly pick (as usual a completely random opening of the Lawrence Park volumes and picking the individual upon whom my gaze happens to fall) was a man by the name of Solomon Moses. Every sitter thus far has had a tale to tell, and Solomon was no exception, although the story is less about himself (how unusual!) and more about the stunning woman he married, and her family. Her name was Rachel. Her mother was the daughter of a preeminent Jewish merchant of Lancaster and her father Michael Gratz was descended from a long line of respected rabbis. Rachel was one of TWELVE children, 7 boys and 5 girls. Rachel was the 8th child, born in 1783, she died at the early age of 40, but not before she bore Solomon 9 children. (Park describes her life as "short and unevetful.") The Gratz daughters were known for their beauty. Rachel’s sister Rebecca was famed not only for her stunning looks and thwarted love affair with a non-Jew, but for her good works during her life-time which included founding the first Hebrew Sunday School in America.

Below are the portraits of Rachel, wife of Solomon Moses, painted about the time of her wedding, her sister Rebecca painted by Thomas Sully, and her mother Miriam by GS.

Mrs. Solomon Moses (Rachel Gratz)

Boston, 1806 Gilbert Stuart

The original painting by Gilbert Stuart is on loan at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia

Stunning Sully (her portrait was not done by Stuart) portrait of sister Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869).

Rebecca never married.

from Rebecca Gratz & 19th-Century America

"When at last Sully was offered the opportunity to paint his patroness he depicted her as a regal lady of fashion gazing pensively into the middle distance. In doing so he caught for posterity the thoughtful woman who developed and managed good works as well as the wealthy woman who loved clothes and knew how to use them to enhance her good looks."

Mrs. Michael Gratz (mother of Rachel and Rebecca)

Philadelphia 1802, Gilbert Stuart

from Rebecca Gratz & 19th-Century America: " 'In 1802 Miriam Gratz, Rebecca's mother, acceded to the requests of her children that she have her portrait painted. Rebecca went with her for her first sitting and wrote to her friend Maria Fenno about the experience. From a position "behind Stewart's chair" (that would be Gilbert Stuart she's talking about) she marveled "to see a countenance so dear to my heart appear on a board which but a few minutes before was a...piece of mahogany." She was struck by the resemblance and animation she saw in the work.

Miriam Gratz died suddenly in 1808, leaving her family in profound grief. Her husband Michael had suffered from depression for years, then sustained a stroke in 1800 from which he made a very partial recovery. He was as dependent on her as any of her children. Rebecca wrote to Maria in 1809: "We have indeed shut up our greatest treasure, the portrait of our beloved Mother, but we often visit it to weep over features too deeply graven on our hearts to require even the painter's skill to preserve. When first we were deprived of this best of parents I daily visited her picture, and felt that my only consolation was to gaze on it. But one day my father went into the room and was so overcome by looking at it, that we determined to sacrifice our wishes of having it constantly before us and close the room where it hangs.' "

from Lawrence Park:

Mrs Michael Gratz 1750-1808

Miriam, daughter of Joseph and Rosa (Bunn) Simon. She married in 1769 Michael Gratz (1740-1811), a Philadelphia merchant. Her daughter Rachel (1782-1823), Mrs. Solomon Moses, was painted by Stuart, and her husband and well-known daughter Rebecca were painted by Sully.

(I don't normally continue with the Park description of the portrait but do so here.)

Philadelphia, 1802. She is shown half-length, seated, three-quarters right, in a high, square-backed upholstered chair, studded with brass-headed nails, with her brown eyes directed to the spectator. A white lace ruffled cap with a white satin bow in front, gives only a glimpse of her hair. She wears a low-necked black dress, with a white muslin tucker, exposing the throat, and with loose sleeves reaching half-way between her elbows and wrists. About her neck is a short necklace. Her hands are brought together on her lap. In the background, a strip of light walnut panelled wall shows at the right, draped with a crimson curtain.

Gilbert Stuart Spring Fair

2010-04-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of the homesite http://www.gilbertstuartmuseum.org

Gilbert Stuart Spring Fair !
April 25, 2010
1 - 4 p.m.

... at the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace. Fish on the Run Program, corn grinding, Jonnycakes by Carpenter's Grist Mill, demonstrations, exhibits and sale. Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum, 815 Gilbert Stuart Road, Saunderstown RI. For information call 401-294-3001 or visit http://www.gilbertstuartmuseum.org

♥♥♥♥

Random monthly pick: Solomon Moses 1774-1857; & ..."a cargo of beaux" !

2010-04-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

I always look forward, somehow, to doing my Random Monthly Pick, with some minor fear and trepidation (in addition to the anticipation!) ... What if the person is entirely boring? What if he or she is a null, with a life from which no narrative unfolds! But, I think, somehow every person in some way, shape or form, can tell a story. Jewish merchant of New York, Solomon Moses, in his own special way, comes to us with an INTERESTING TWIST !

I read the entry from Park, and thought: oh oh.

from Lawrence Park;
Solomon Moses 1774-1857

A merchant in New York. In 1806 he married Rachel, daughter of Michael and Miriam (Simon) Gratz of Philadelphia.
Lawrence Park also indicates there was a bridal portrait of Rachel, wife of Solomon and says: “She was noted for her blond beauty. ...She brought up a large family of children, but her life, compared with that of her better-known sister Rebecca (1781-1869), was short and uneventful.” Then there is a brief description of the painting (shown above), and no more detail regarding the individual or portrait.

But...., I wondered....

WHO was Rebecca Gratz?

and hereupon I came across one of those specialized, wonderful blogs that have sprung up like wild flowers in the internet landscape....

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/

"Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869), a Philadelphia philanthropist, founded the first Hebrew Sunday School in America and participated as a founding member in several other nonsectarian and Jewish charitable organizations which were among the first to be organized and run by women. Besides her good works, she is remembered today for her beauty, her thwarted love affair with a non-Jew and the persistent story that she was the inspiration for the character of Rebecca in Scott's novel Ivanhoe."

The following is an excerpt from the Rebecca Gratz blog

Sleigh Bells Ring

An unscientific survey of the weather information in Rebecca Gratz's letters shows that Philadelphia winters were as variable in the nineteenth century as they have been in more recent years. One December she is gathering roses in her garden; in another she is housebound by rain and ice. But when snow came, and it seems to have come more frequently than in the 21st century, people of Rebecca's time had one thing that added greatly to the season's charm: travel by sleigh.

On a November evening in 1800, after a snowstorm, Rebecca's friend Maria Fenno in New York wrote that there was "no other noise but the jingling of sleighs" in the street outside her house.
Lovely as the sleigh bells were, Maria's words point up their reason for being: sleighs moved silently, the horses' hoofs muffled by the snow -- the bells alerted the unwary to their approach.

In January 1805 Eliza Fenno, Maria's little sister, recorded another evening made magical by sleigh bells. A friend of Eliza's had planned to give a dance at her house, but on the day of the event there was a heavy snowstorm, and by 8 p.m. no one had come. "We were in despair when the sound of sleigh bells coming down the lane made our hearts leap...." The sleigh brought "a cargo of beaux," and more sleighs soon followed. It was "a most delightful dance," Eliza wrote Rebecca, and the party did not break up until 3 a.m.
Another pleasure the sleigh afforded was to old people whose joints could no longer take the bouncing of carriages and wagons on the truly terrible roads which existed in most parts of the country in the early nineteenth century. A sleigh, however, could give them a smooth ride to those they could no longer visit at most times of the year -- and then whisk them home again before the snow melted.
Finally, there were sleighing parties similar to the one pictured in a detail from the painting above by John Lewis Krimmel. Here a sleigh full of merrymakers is probably making a tour of inns in the area where they can stop, warm up, drink, then go on to the next hostelry. As they are pictured here, the partiers are feeling no pain, probably noisy and a menace to other traffic. Sleighs, it seems, for all their charm, could be used recklessly.

Click here to reach this post on Susan Sklaroff's lovely blog.

"I discovered Rebecca Gratz when I became a docent at the Rosenbach Museum & Library which has a lovely portrait of her by Thomas Sully. To learn more, I began to read the hundreds of Gratz family letters which survive in libraries around the country and found wonderful stories about Rebecca as well as information about customs, events and technological changes of her time."

♥

Ever think about where the description 'Bigwig' comes from?

2010-03-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

John FitzGibbon by Gilbert Stuart 1789-90

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

This portrait of John FitzGibbon was painted by Stuart during his Dublin period. To refresh your memory our Gibby had been invited to Dublin in 1787 for a commission; he thought this invitation in fact a good idea in order to escape mounting debts in London. However he did not escape this cycle of pernicious debt even after taking partial payments at the first sittings. It was during this time that he was sent to Debtor’s prison where he raised eyebrows by continuing to paint the rich and mighty who visited him there. When he left Dublin in 1793, hoping to finally make his fortune painting Washington, Stuart left a number of canvases unfinished (and dreams dashed?), remarking, "The artists of Dublin will get employed in finishing them."

However, Stuart did manage to paint this portrait of the newly appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland, “a position of supremacy that FitzGibbon took to mean the deployment of high intelligence, vitriolic arrogance, and a reinvigorated desire to accumulate the lavish trappings of status.” (Barratt & Miles p 79) The very definition of a BIGWIG !

The haughty chancellor, draped in his majestic robes, peers out from beneath his incredibly huge wig.

Note the background accents which Stuart also preserved for his later, more moderate portraits (ie Meeker), the reddish-toned drapery, blue skies with clouds.

The transcript of Samuel Meeker's letter to Gen James Winchester; Philadelphia 1804

2010-03-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia 27 December 1804
Cragfont, Tennessee
Gen James Winchester

Sir,

Enclosed I send you a list of the article of slaves & heading with their value here
I would think they would sell well in Orleans.
They leave for Domingo in stowing depots and to file up where other freight cannot be had and answer to export to most of the ports in Europe as well as the West Indies. If you can deliver them at Orleans at 1/3d less than they are worth here I should consider this always safe. Cotton continues about the same as stated in my former advice

Your obed[ient] Serv[ant]
Samuel Meeker

[Letter pictured at bottom, I have transcribed it here to the best of my ability! Corrections accepted. "List of slaves" is no longer existent.]

NO typewriter, no house address, no envelope, with a Philadelphia hand stamp, the letter is addressed only to “General James Winchester, Cragfont, Tennessee”. While daily mail delivery to the home is taken for granted today, it was a different matter in the early 1800s. During the 1700s and 1800s postal carriers traveled long distances on rough roads to scattered post offices, from Philadelphia a letter took 32 days to reach Kentucky and 44 days to reach Tennessee. Mail runs would normally be made once a week and follow a route of selected towns that were established by bids; Cragfont was not a town but simply the name of Winchester’s house. It can be assumed that everyone in the nearby region knew of James Winchester and his brother George.... “Both moved to the Tennessee country by 1785 and immediately became active in frontier government and military service. George was ambushed and killed by Chickasaw Indians in 1794, but James prospered. He added to his land holdings, built mills, and established trade in tobacco and other products with merchants in New Orleans and several eastern cities. In 1802 he built a spacious home, "Cragfont," which was described by a contemporary as "the most elegant house west of the Appalachians." American National Biography Online http://www.anb.org/

The land of Chickasaw Bluffs in Tn was bought by Andrew Jackson, John Overton and James Winchester and a land company was formed. Thereby was Winchester a co-founder of the City of Memphis.

"Cragfont," described as "the most elegant house west of the Appalachians."
~

The question arises, just how deeply was Meeker involved in the slave trade, or was this just one transaction among many, involving a variety of products including cotton, tobacco, lumber, etc smoothed by trade information/funds provided by Meeker to Winchester in this instance?

I will be taking a look at Samuel Meeker’s career.....what provided his start in the world of finance in Philadelphia at this time?

Click on the letter for an incredible, close-up view of this historic document postulating "how well they will sell." How do I feel, that my ancestor should write such words? Sad. It is troubling. But I believe that he was not involved in the trade. The letter is important in that it shows the depth of the rot, how even the most respectable of citizens spoke of these men and women as if they were chattel...

For those of you who are interested in German, note the form of the double 's' in the word 'less' ["If you can deliver them at Orleans at 1/3d less than they are worth" & in "Tennessee"]. This form of double 's', called Eszett or ß, is still used in the German language, and it is very interesting to see it being used here in English. (ß ...gesprochen Eszett oder scharfes S)

An original letter from Samuel Meeker; Philadelphia, December 27,1804

2010-03-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

courtesy Hargrett Library Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Georgia

more details to follow

click on the letter for a lusciously larger view of an historic document

Random monthly pick: a Stuart portrait illuminates aristocratic peculiarities of Old England

2010-03-03T08:29:00.001-08:00

Portrait of Edward Parker by Gilbert Stuart

England c 1787

from Lawrence Park:
Edward Parker
1730-1794

Of Browsholme, County York, England. He was a student at St. John’s College, Cambridge; Lord of the Manor at Ingleton; bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland. He married Barbara (d. 1873), daughter of Sir William Fleming, third Baronet of Rydal, County Westmoreland, by whom he had one son who only survived him three years.

********

The gentleman portrayed here is of interest not only because he is the spitting image of Washington (lack of teeth, or similar dentures?), but primarily because he is associated with a magnficent ancestral estate ~the ultimate symbol of weath, tradition, and class in old England~ Browsholme Hall, (pronounced 'Brewsom'), built in 1507 in Lancashire, in the North West of England. Edward was a ‘relatively’ recent scion from the Parker family, tracing its origins to the 1300s, when they gained the title of 'park-keeper' to John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, Duke of Aquitaine (1340 –1399).

Edward Parker’s interest in commissioning Stuart to do his portrait stemmed surely from a wish to add his accurate likeness to the many ancestral portraits already adorning the silk-covered walls of his historic home. The Parker family has lived in this historic house since it was built, and as is typical of these huge, old, magnficent edifices requiring large sums of money for upkeep, the house was opened to the public in 1957, and today the estate’s architecture, fine art collections and furnishings, extensive landscaped gardens and lake, are advertised as an ideal location for film, TV and advertising; ‘an excellent backdrop for a variety of periods.’ “The present day owners Robert and Amanda Parker invite guests into the family home for small conferences, corporate hospitality, musical events, craft fairs and open days throughout the year.... and continue the work of administering and restoring the estate.” [http://www.browsholme.co.uk/]

Unfortunately it seems the family did not have the means to keep Edward’s portrait, for according to Park “The picture was purchased from the family by M. Knoedler & Co., New York, and sold in 1923 to Albert R. Jones, Esq. of Kansas City, Missouri.”

Lovely day, lovely house isn't it?

If you are a reader unversed in old English traditions (like me), you might ask what is a ‘bow-bearer of the Forest of Bowland’? from Wiki : The name Bowland of ‘Forest of Bowland’ has nothing to do with archery or with mediaeval cattle farms or dairies (Old Norse, buu-, cow), but derives from the Old Norse boga-/bogi-, meaning a “bend in a river”. It is a tenth-century coinage used to describe the topography of the Hodder basin, with its characteristic meandering river and streams.

map image
[courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Bowland]

Bowbearers of the Forest of Bowland have been appointed since the twelfth century. A Bowbearer was originally a noble who acted as ceremonial attendant to the Lord of Bowland, latterly the King, by bearing (carrying) his hunting bow, but over the centuries the Bowbearer's role underwent many changes. At an early date, the Bowbearer was a “forester in fee” who was the official in overall charge of the Forest ('a royal hunting ground'), normally paying rent for the position and having particular privileges such as cablish (the right to take dead or wind blown wood from the Forest). He was a paid official responsible to the King. [http://apps.buckscc.gov.uk/eforms/medieval_life/pdfs/Forest_Officials.pdf]

Wikipedia states [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Bowland]: "as the last remnants of the ancient forest vanished, the office of Bowbearer was reduced to little more than an honorific. The Parker family of Browsholme Hall today claim to be "hereditary Bowbearers of Bowland" but this claim cannot be supported by the historical evidence. While the Parkers certainly served as Bowbearers over a number of generations up until 1858, they were always subject to grants made by the Lord of Bowland and hold no hereditary right.”

The Arms of the Parkers of Browsholme Hall

"Unmoved by either wave or wind"

"Keepers of the deer in the Royal Forest of Bowland"

more on Browsholme Hall
In 1975 when the current owner, Robert Parker inherited the Hall from a distant cousin, the gardens where very overgrown, the front lawn was grazed by sheep and the ponds and rockeries colonised by trees. Yet underneath lay a landscape and garden that had continually changed in the hands of generations of the family since the house was built in 1507. After the 17thC, the grounds have been managed in the style of Capability Brown perhaps reflecting the difficulty of maintaining a garden in high rainfall (80 inches per annum), 600ft above sea level and the unforgiving bolder clay on which is situated.
With only a single gardener the garden is maintained as time and nature allows: it is a slow and patient process. Many projects take years to come to fruition, but this year they hope to restore and enlarge the ornamental pond next to the ‘box’ garden.
The Yew Walk which was planted over 300 years ago as a hedge now almost forms a tunnel and a sheltered path even during windy weather.
The Chestnut Avenue by comparison is barely 100 years old, but the white ‘candles’ make a superb display in May, a prelude to a crop of conkers later in the year.
The Lake, originally created about 1740 now extends to 3 acres and was one of the first restoration projects undertaken by the family in the 1970s and is stocked with trout. There is a pleasant walk around the lake.The Front Lodge built in the early 17thC with the Arch from Ingleton Hall is the best place to admire the magnificent setting of Browsholme. [http://www.visitlancashire.com/site/things-to-do/search/browsholme-hall-p17787]

[click here for more info on orthodontics in the 18th century!]

a lovely portrait, claimed to be by Jane Stuart

2010-02-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

In December 'Mark' sent me this portrait of his relative, he says it is by Jane Stuart.

(I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the attribution.)

I wrote Mark a couple of months ago, after he left a comment on the blog. "I just noticed your comment on my gilbert stuart blog. You have a portrait (somber) by Jane Stuart? How do you know it is by Jane Stuart (is it signed)? Can you send me a pic, and the story of the painting?"

He wrote back:

Beth,

I took a some pics of the painting, from my iphone, as some thief stole my digital camera last fall :(. It's not hanging now and needs some plaster fixed on frame (as you can see in pic). As I look at the picture and read my comment from your blog, I don't think she looks as somber now as I once thought before. Ms. Stuart was definitely a master painter. The person in the portrait would be my great-great grandmother (Jane Adams), i believe.
Kind regards, Mark

Jane was the youngest of 12 children born to Gilbert Stuart and his wife, Charlotte and was one of her father’s most trusted studio assistants, often mixing paints for him as a child and later helping to finish his paintings. She maintained her own studio in Boston for several years before moving back to Newport in 1858, and continued to paint and entertain up until her death in 1888.

photos of Lily and me in AK (Dec 09)

2010-02-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

Pictures of Alaska can be found by clicking here (or simply scroll down to Feb 9 one post down)

Stuart led off in one of his merriest veins, and the time passed pleasantly in jocose and amusing talk (with Horace Binney)

2010-02-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

Horace, a very young and up-coming lawyer was painted by Stuart in 1800, and one day some 50 years later, as an older man, he talked to his nephew about the portrait. This nephew wrote down these reminisces with his uncle in a diary, which was then later shared with George Mason, biographer of Stuart “The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart” 1894 ... and I share them in their entirety with you here. Enjoy the insight into our artist: his particular mode of painting, issues of concern, and ... how happy he was to not be a Tailor!

Binney, Horace

From the diary of the late Horace Binney Wallace, a nephew of Mr. Binney, I am permitted to make the following extract:

“Wednesday, June 31st, 1852. I called today upon Mr. Binney, before leaving town for the summer. The conversation turned upon Stuart’s portrait of him, which hangs in our back parlor. He said that it was painted in the autumn of 1800, when he was not twenty-one years old. Some one had brought out from Canton some Chinese copies of Stuart’s Washington, and Stuart prosecuted an injunction in the Circuit Court of the United States against the sale of them. ‘I was sedulous,’ said Mr. Binney, ‘in my attendance on the courts, and here I became acquainted with Stuart. He came frequently to my office,’ continued Mr. Binney, ‘which was in Front street. I was always entertained by his conversation. I endeavored to enter into his peculiar vein, and show him that I relished his wit and character. So he took snuff, jested, punned and satirized to the full freedom of his bent.’ “Binney’ he said to one of my friends, ‘has the length of my foot better than any one I know of,’ meaning, I suppose, that I knew how to humor him, and give him play.
“ ‘When your mother requested me to give her the portrait that is in your house, I made an appointment with Stuart, and called to give my first sitting. He had his panel ready (for the picture is painted on a board), and I said: ‘Now, how do you wish me to sit? Must I be grave? Must I look at you?’ ‘No,’ said Stuart; ‘sit just as you like, look whichever way you choose; talk, laugh, move about, walk around the room, if you please.’ So, without more thought of the picutre on my part, Stuart led off in one of his merriest veins, and the time passed pleasantly in jocose and amusing talk. At the end of an hour I rose to go, and, looking at the portrait, I saw that the head was as perfectly done as it is at this moment, with the exception of the eyes, which were blank, I gave one more sitting of an hour, and in the course of it Stuart said: ‘Now, look at me one moment,’ I did so. Stuart put in the eyes by a couple of touches of the pencil, and the head was perfect. I gave no more sittings.
“ ‘When the picture was sent home,’ continued Mr. Binney, ‘it was much admired; but Mr. T***** M***** observed that the painter had put the buttons of the coat on the wrong side. Sometime after this, Stuart sent for the picture, to do some little matter of finish which had been left, and, to put an end to a foolish cavil, I determined to tell him of M.’s criticism; but how to do it without offending him was the question. The conversation took a turn upon the excessive attention which some minds pay to the minutie of costume, etc. This gave the opportunity desired. ‘By the way, said I, ‘do you know that somebody has remarked that you have put the buttons on the wrong side of that coat?’ ‘Have I?’ said Stuart. ‘Well, thank God, I am no tailor.’ He immediately took his pencil and with a stroke drew the lapelle to the collar of the coat, which is seen there at present. ‘Now,’ said Stuart, ‘it is a double-breasted coat, and all is right, only the buttons on the other side not being seen.’ ‘Ha!’ said I, ‘you are the prince of tailors, worthy to be master of the merchant tailors’ guild.’
“ ‘Stuart,’ said Mr. Binney ‘had all forms in his mind, and he painted hands, and other details, from an image in his thoughts, not requiring an original model before him. There was no sitting for that big law-book that, in the picutre, I am holding. The coat was entirely Stuart’s device. I never wore one of that color [a near approach to a claret color]. He thought it would suit the complexion.’
“ ‘On the day when I was sitting to him the second time,’ said Mr. Binney, ‘I said to Stuart, ‘What do you consider the most characteristic feature of the face? You have already shown me that the eyes are not; and we know from sculpture, in which the eyes are wanting, the same thing.’ Stuart just pressed the end of his pencil against the tip of his nose, distorting it oddly. ‘Ah, I see, I see,’ cried Mr. Binney.
“Mr. Binney agreed with me in thinking that the Washington was one of Stuart’s least inspired heads. Stuart used to call that head, you know, his ‘hundred-dollar bill.’ One day, when he had his family at Germantown, and his painting room in the city, learning from Mrs. Stuart that the domestic treasure was empty, he set off to come to town, to his bank, for one hundred dollars. At a tavern, half-way, got out of the stage to get something to drink, and in searching his pocket-book found a fifty-dollar note, which he had forgotten that he had. When the coachman called upon him to get into the coach again, he replied, ‘You may go on; I mean to wait for the return coach.’
“ ‘Stuart,’ Mr. Binney caid, ‘thought highly of his portrait of John Adams. Showing it one day to Mr. Binney, ‘Look at him,’ said he. ‘It is very like him, is it not? Do you know what he is going to do? He is just going to sneeze.’
“ ‘Stuart had an anecdote illustrative of physiognomy—its truth or falsehood. There was a person in Newport celebrated for his powers of calculation, but in other respects almost an idiot. One day, Stuart, being in the British Museum, came upon a bust, and immediately exclaimed to his companion, who was also a Rhode Island man: ‘Why, here is a head of Calculating Jemmy.’ He called the curator and said: ‘I see you have the head of Calculating Jemmy here.’ “Calculating Jemmy!’ said the curator; ‘that is the head of Sir Isaac Newton.’ "

The portrait of Mr. Binney above described, Mr. John William Wallace gave back to his uncle in his old age. It is a picture of a youth of twenty years, having a high complexion, bright chestnut-colored hair and splendid blue eyes. Hon. Horace Binney died in 1875, aged 96 years.

Professional Career:
Founding member of the Hasty Pudding Club
Founding member of the Law Library Company of the City of Philadelphia;Director, 1805-1819; 1821-1827
Assembly of Pennsylvania, member, 1806-1807
1st U.S. Bank, Director, 1808
City of Philadelphia, Common Council, president, 1810-1812
City of Philadelphia, Select Council, member 1816-1819
Founded the Apprentices' Library 1821
Associated Members of the Bar of Philadelphia, Vice Chancellor, 1821
Law Association of Philadelphia, Vice Chancellor, 1827-1836; Chancellor, 1852-54
Law Academy, President,1832 Member of the U.S. Congress 1833-1835

Horace Binney by Gilbert Stuart

National Gallery of Art DC

from Lawrence Park:

Honorable Horace Binney

1780-1875 A son of Dr. Barnabas and Mary (Woodrow) Binney of Philadelphia. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1797, admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1800 and became one of the most prominent lawyers of the country. He obtained his LL.D. Harvard, in 1827. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society; of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and a Fellow of the American Academy.

John Adams by Stuart

National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C

about to sneeze?☺

♥

ALASKA

2010-02-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

Kasilof, on the Kenai Peninsula. Becky's house. Me, doggie Aleutia.

Becky is a childhood friend, her parents and my parents were friends in Ukiah, Ca. in the late 1950s. Her father was in the lumber business in northern California.

Noah (Becky's youngest son) and my daughter Lily

A view from the guest house where we stayed the first night, had Reindeer sausage for breakfast.
A happy moose.

"Veronica's" in Ninilchik. We planned a big party there, it was closed.

Alaskan toys.

happy kids

Aleutia

doggie to my rescue

Homer, at Dean's house (winner of Iditarod 1984)

Ninilchik

approaching Homer

Joseph Story...next...Edward Stow... and evidence of my early confusion about who the artist could be of SAMUEL MEEKER

2010-02-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

... Edward Stow by Gilbert Stuart 1802/3

When telling the tale of Joseph Story and his wife in the posts previous to this one, the next portrait described in Park was Edward Stow, which, although a typical Stuart portrait, has special meaning for me because it was when I first stumbled across this portrait, just by sheer luck on the internet, that I noted the striking similarities between this portrait and my own of Samuel Meeker, and I thought then: "My portrait is not by Peale, but by Stuart!"
So I have decided to show this portrait again, and the 'cheat sheet' printout I made with notes, which so clearly show my confusion of a few years ago. Because I thought my portrait was of Major Meeker (click here for more on the Major), the generational year was completely off as Major Meeker was the 1st cousin of Captain Samuel Meeker, father of the sitter (click here for more on the father of Samuel). And the family thought it was by Peale! But Peale's style, although the artist fit the right time frame for Major Meeker, was just not ....right..... So then I thought the artist was Trumbull. I knew about Stuart, but not knowing the style of his painting, I had ruled him out because at the time that Major Meeker would have been painted, Stuart was AWAY in England!

But yet I thought, look at that same arrangement, the same color schemes, the pose, the clothing, the curtain and sky, the chair, showing a hand and some papers...HOW was Major Meeker painted by Stuart? How to FIT that timeline! But in the end, I finally pieced together that my gt grandmother had made a mistake in her family tree book, that the sitter in the portrait was NOT Major Meeker (who was also a SAMUEL) but in fact an entirely different Meeker, Samuel Meeker, merchant of Philadelphia. (A major clue was finding out about the Stuart portrait of William Meeker which is listed in Park. William had been a business partner in Philadelphia of a "Samuel Meeker", hmmmm I thought.) So in the end it was not the Major, a local militia man who had to sell his farm in Sussex New Jersey because of debt, although famed for having fought in the Battle of the Minisink, but a young man stemming from the same family, who made his fortune in the shipping, banking, and insurance business in early Philadelphia! A generation later!

Even armed with my digital print out of Edward S. by Gilbert Stuart (see 2/27/09 "I knew...then..."), my confusion continued to reign on the identity of the artist who painted Samuel Meeker. After the editor of the Peale papers stated my portrait was not by CW Peale (see 3/4/09 "Misattribution"), I was still not convinced that the portrait was by Stuart, for there was the Problem of the Timeline. At left one can see on my worksheet the doodle "gone from America went to England" -that refers to Stuart. & "timing is off!"

And now that I have the Lawrence Park volumes (listing a large number of Stuart portraits), I see that the portrait was done in 1802/3... So the fit is super/unquestionable, as I have determined that the portrait of Samuel Meeker was done in 1803. (More on why/how I figured this date, later.)

From Lawrence Park:

Edward Stow 1768-1847
A son of Edward and Mary (Belcher) Stow of Boston, but was born in New York City. He married, in 1793, Anna Brewer Peck, and lived for some years in Philadelphia. It was there that he met Gilbert Stuart and his wife and a great friendship ensued. In 1804 he returned to Boston, and from 1813 until shortly before his death, he was clerk or secretary of the new England Mississippi Land Company.

Sarah, wife of Joseph Story by Gilbert Stuart

2010-02-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Joseph Story by Gilbert Stuart 1819

In the post before this the social, cultural impact of Sarah's husband Joseph (a justice on the United States Supreme Court) on the development of our Republic was described. Not as much is known about his second wife Sarah, who most likely fulfilled her appropriate duties as a wife and mother. In the portrait above she would be age 35. As Joseph's portrait was also done in 1819, it can be presumed they were commissioned at the same time by Joseph, who was then about 40.

From Lawrence Park:

Mrs. Joseph Story

1784-1855

Sarah Waldo Wetmore was a daughter of Judge William Wetmore and Sarah (Waldo) Wetmore, both of Salem, Massachusetts. In 1808 she married, in the North Church, Boston, Joseph Story as his second wife.

Boston, 1819. Panel, 32 ¾ x 25 ¾ inches. She is shown at half-length, seated, turned half-way to the right, with her light brown eyes directed to the spectator. Her chestnut hair in curls over brow and temples is in a knot held by a jeweled comb. She has a lovely brow, a long nose, lips almost verging on a smile, a calm dignity and much charm. Her low-necked dress is of a sheer material trimmed with a lace collar and a narrow belt of turquoise-blue ribbon. A red camel’s hair shawl is draped in such a manner as to cover her left arm and shoulder and, passing at the back, is seen partially covering her right arm with a part of the border hanging over the arm of the chair. Her right hand is in her lap. The plain background is lighter at the right.

Story's first wife, Mary Oliver, died in June 1805, shortly after their marriage. Sarah and Joseph had seven children, though only two, Mary and William Wetmore Story, survived to adulthood. Their son became a noted poet and sculptor, his bust of his father is in the entrance to the Harvard Law School Library.

The random monthly pick: Mr. Joseph Story, following his best principles, sets the country more firmly on a tragic path

2010-02-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

Joseph Story by Gilbert Stuart, Boston 1819

From Lawrence Park:

Joseph Story 1779-1845

Joseph Story was a son of Doctor Elisha and Mehitabel (Pedrick) Story of Marblehead, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1798 and in 1821 received the degree of L.L.D. From 1818 to 1825 he was an overseer of Harvard, and from 1829 to 1845 was Dane Professor of Law. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society and a Fellow of the American Academy. In 1808 he was a member of the Congress, and from 1811 to his death a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He married in 1808 Sarah Waldo Wetmore of Salem, Massachusetts, and their son, William Wetmore Story (1819-1895), was the well-known sculptor.

This month’s random pick is a particularly interesting one as it ties in well to the post on Captain Samuel Meeker (father of the sitter click here) who placed an add in the Weekly Advertiser (Philadelphia), for a runaway slave in the year 1763.
Then again, what small percentage of people in those times did this issue not touch?

Paid slavecatchers crossed state borders, used force and violence to capture runaway slaves, sometimes nabbing freed slaves as well. Federal law sanctioned the capturing & return of fugitives by the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793, and later in 1850 these laws were reinforced. Increasingly the free states enacted laws to counter these federal laws; “personal-liberty laws” entitled slaves to a jury trial and the ‘underground railroad’ grew in opposition. By the 1840s slavery had become a national issue with passions raging hot on both sides, pitting slave states/owners against the non-slave states/abolitionists. It was only a matter of time before the consitutional laws, providing legal status to the capturing of slaves, ran head-on into state laws with the aim of protecting freed slaves.

On April 1 1837, Edward Prigg led an assault and abduction of a black woman named Margaret Morgan and her children. She had moved in 1832 from Maryland to Pennsylvania, in Maryland she had lived in freedom but had not been formally emancipated. The heirs of her former owner John Ashmore decided to claim her as a slave, and hired slavecatcher Prigg. But Pennsylvania had laws stating No negro or mulatto slave ...shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed and Prigg was arrested under kidnapping charges. Prigg pleaded not guilty, and argued that he had been duly appointed by John Ashmore to arrest and return Morgan to her owners in Maryland. However, in a ruling on May 22 1839, the Court of Quarter Sessions of York County convicted him. Prigg appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that the Pennsylvania law was not able to supersede federal law.

In 1842, US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote and issued the majority opinion in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania. It was a landmark decision in which the court upheld fugitive slave recaption as an historically necessary constitutional provision that had to be protected at all costs, even in the face of contradictive state law (ie reversed Prigg's conviction). Story was opposed to slavery on moral as well as policy grounds (in The Amistad 1841, he freed the Africans who had been sold into slavery by a narrow reading of the treaty with Spain), but tragically he was also firmly convinced of the primacy and importance of upholding the Constitution, the Law of the Land. The decision was crucial because it announced that slavery was a national issue that could not be challenged by state action, and that slavery was woven into the Constitution. The decision caused a powder-keg explosion and rippled across the country, eventually cascading along with other motivating forces... into civil war. Story was the Court's most aggressive champion of federal jurisdiction, and was most successful in expanding federal jurisdiction in the areas of maritime and commercial law. But this controversial case led to personal attacks and a professional bruising, ultimately tarnishing his legacy. Story served on the Supreme Court for thirty-three years. He died on September 10, 1845, at the age of sixty-five.

Portrait of Joseph Story by George P. A. Healy

from the Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court History Profile:

JOSEPH STORY was born on September 18, 1779, in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1798. Story read law in the offices of two Marblehead attorneys and was admitted to the bar in 1801. He established a law practice in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1805, Story served one term in the Massachusetts Legislature, and in 1808 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. After one term, he returned to the Massachusetts Lower House, and in 1811 he was elected Speaker. On November 15, 1811, President James Madison nominated Story to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate confirmed the appointment on November 18, 1811. At the age of thirty-two, Story was the youngest person ever appointed to the Supreme Court. While on the Supreme Court, Story served as a delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820 and was a Professor of Law at Harvard, where he wrote a series of nine commentaries on the law, each of which was published in several editions. http://www.supremecourthistory.org/history/supremecourthistory_history_assoc_014story.htm

The truely sad ending to this tale of misplaced notions of best principles, Morgan and her children were subsequently sold to slave traders and disappeared from the historical record.

Update on Lily, me at about the same age... (descendants)

2010-01-30T09:31:00.000-08:00

A 'double date' last week. The photo is taken in Capitola (town next to Santa Cruz).
The occasion was a dance at the highschool in Aptos.

I just received this card a couple of days ago. :-))

Me at about the same age.

I have to admire what the young girls wear these days.

Early 70ies. wow.

In the red jacket is my friend Jamie, his parents and my parents were friends in Japan. Only my mom is still alive. Jamie is a retired geologist, we don't have much contact, although we saw each other at a Canadian Academy (this school is in Kobe, Japan) reunion held near Salt Lake City a few years ago.

The other fellow (I thought quite cute at the time) was a friend of Jamie's. If I had ever worn a dress akin to Lily's (in the photo at the top of the post), methinks my peers would have thought I went bonkers!

***

Line of descendants from Phebe Meeker to Lily

Lily<--Beth<--Carolyn Cory Ahrens<--Benjamin Hyde Cory<--Carrie Martin Cory<--Thomas Mulford Martin<--Mary Brookfield Martin<--Phebe Meeker Brookfield (twin sister of Samuel Meeker, the sitter.)

Captain Samuel Meeker, father of the sitter (con.)

2010-01-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Captain Samuel Meeker (c.1738/9-c.1800+)

son of Samuel Meeker (1716-1757) & Rachel

4 children with wife Mary Clark---> Mary (1761) never married, William (1762-1831) m. Sarah Hays, Samuel (1763-1831) and Phebe (1763-1814), the twins.

A prominent citizen of the West Fields, Captain Samuel Meeker, father of the sitter Samuel Meeker in the Stuart portrait, was a timber trader and cabinetmaker; the family resided at Short Hills on the edge of Springfield, NJ. Captain Samuel was married in the Westfield Presbyterian Church on December 14th, 1760 to Mary Clark. At least one of his sons, William was baptized in the Westfield Presbyterian Church in 1762.

Despite the recent ravages of the American Revolutionary War, that Captain Samuel Meeker was well-to-do is indicated by the rateables of 1779 which describe him as “owning one hundred and thirty–six acres, three horses, seven head of cattle, and a riding chair.” In addition, Samuel’s son William (1762-1831), was shown to own (by the rateables in the years 1778 and1780), 140 acres and one-third of a sawmill in the Mendham Township. It seems likely that Captain Samuel had bought timber land in that area which was just opening up as well as a third interest in the sawmill, under William’s name. William may have been sent there to look after the family interest, but was back in Springfield in June of 1780, taking part in the Battle of Springfield. On March 31, 1782 he married Sarah Hays of Westfield in the Westfield Presbyterian Church.

Captain Meeker also served in the Revolutionary War as a first lieutenant and as vice-captain in the Essex County Troop of Light Horse. When the British retreated in the Battle of Springfield in 1780, burning and looting, Samuel’s house also went up in flames.

The “New York Gazette” on July 5, 1779, reported: "Last Tuesday night a detachment from his Majesty's 37th Regiment with a party of Col. Barton's and some refugees, went over from Staten-Island to a place called Woodbridge Raway, where they surprised a party of rebels in a tavern, killed their commanding officer Captain Skinner of a Troop of Light Horse, and another man and took the following prisoners, viz: Capt. Samuel Meeker...” …… “but by the timely exertions of a few militia, who collected immediately, they were released...”

***

Slavery had obtained legal sanction in New Jersey under the proprietary regimes of Berkeley and Carteret (c. 1665.) Captain Meeker and Thomas Jefferson had something in common

from 221. The Pennsylvania Journal, and the Weekly Advertiser (Philadelphia), #1066,
May 12, 1763 ---"Run away from Samuel Meeker, a Negro Man, Sampson, about 6 feet 4 inches, aged 24 Years, speaks good English: Had on when he went away two dark colour’d homespun Jackets, Leather Breeches, brown Stockings. Whoever takes up and secures said Negro so that his Master may have him again, shall receive Twenty Shillings Reward and all reasonable charges paid by Samuel Meeker."
"Pretends to be free": runaway slave advertisements from colonial and revolutionary New York and New Jersey By Graham Russell Hodges, Alan Edward Brown 1994

"Quite a number of slaves were held in this community [Westfield]. It was the custom, and few questioned the right for years .... Slaves were kept in many of the best Westfield families. They were well treated and happy. Many of them became members of the Presbyterian church. In the old session book of the Presbyterian church of Westfield the pastor, Benjamin Woodruff, writes as follows: “August 12 1759. Baptized my negro child......... and “November 8, 1778. Baptized a negro woman belonging to Samuel Meeker, N. Dorcas.”
History of Union County, New Jersey, Volumes 1-2 By Frederick William Ricord East Jersey History Co. Newark, NJ 1897 p.523

Horses, Taxes, & Captain Samuel Meeker

2010-01-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

Goethe zu Pferde

(Goethe astride his horse)

taken from “Frauen der Goethezeit in ihren Briefen"; Verlag der Nation Berlin 1966

The last post was about the possible misidentification of (the Stuart portrait of) John Ricketts as the Circus Rider; but what I would like to highlight here is the fact that before Ricketts actually opened his circus in the way we understand a ‘circus’ to be today, it was an eqestrian show. People were interested in horsemanship at the time, and at least initially, Ricketts gave riding and dressage lessons in the morning to the high society of Philadelphia.

Not only did the military depend on good horsemanship, but also at this time horses were part of daily life and riding skills were highly prized and admired.

Samuel Meeker came to Philadelphia from a well known & well-to-do family in the Westfields of New Jersey, and it can be certain he grew up with horses, and later activities provide the evidence that he was an excellent and energetic rider himself. Looking back at his family history, tax tables show that Samuel’s father, also named Samuel (he can be differentiated by the ‘Captain’ before his name, as he had been actively involved in the local militia) was relatively wealthy. Ownership of horses was reason for taxes to be levied.

Taxation from the Rateables in the Township of Elizabeth of Westfield Ward in County of Essex in the State of New Jersey show the residents "...shall be assessed, levied and raised on the several inhabitants of this state, their lands, and tenements, goods and chattles..."

Ownership of horses was noted more than once in these tax tables (I also show other items of interest which are assessed).

1. Acres of Land

2. Value of Land (in pounds)

3. Horses

4. Horned Cattle

5. Hogs
....
15. Single men w/ horse ("every single man, whether he lives with his parents or otherwise, who keeps a horse...")

16. Single men ("Every single man, whether he lives with his parents or otherwise,who does not keep a horse...")

17. Slaves

18. Servants
19. R Chairs, kittereens & Sulkies (R Chair - Riding Chair; kittereen - "A two wheeled one-horse carriage with a moveable top" [Webster's Unabridged])
......

The Tables from 1779 describe Captain Samuel Meeker as “owning one hundred and thirty–six acres, three horses, seven head of cattle, and a riding chair.” Capt. Samuel’s first son William (1762-1831), was shown to own (by the rateables in the years 1778 and 1780), 140 acres and one-third of a sawmill in the Mendham Township NJ.

A thoroughly DAZZLING art-historical mystery; was The Circus Rider John Bill Ricketts or Jean Baptist Breschard? Read on, if interested!

2010-01-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

My last two posts have described the painting by Stuart named The Circus Rider, and current art historians are (at least officially) unanimous that the sitter is no other than John Ricketts. Yet, in an indeed surprising development, Peter Breschard objects to this designation with much indignation, and in fact his evidence that the circus rider is NOT Ricketts, if not incontrovertibly solid as of yet, is just as COMPELLING, to my mind. Keep in mind that Mason (1894), identified the portrait as "Breschard, the circus-rider".

Adding to this high level of confusion are two inscriptions on the painting, generally agreed to have been added at a later date: (lower left) "Portrait of / Mr. Rickarts / Horse Eqestraine / Friend of the Artist / Gilbert Stuart" & (lower right) "Portrait of Rickarts / Horse Eqestrian / An Intimate Friend of / Gilbert Stuart." These interpretations are taken from "American Paintings of the 18 century" by Ellen G. Miles, National Gallery of Art, Washington. However, perhaps, these inscriptions themselves can be subject to another interpretation? In fact consider the French name Breschard: with a French hard pronunciation of the first letter B as P, and the last letter d as t, the name Breschard is pronounced and could be spelled as Preschart, and Lo and Behold to my mind, that left inscription looks incredibly like "Preschart", and NOT "Rickarts". The second insription to my eye also looks as if the name of the sitter begins with a "B" and ends with one t. Lawrence Park shows the spelling to be "Portrait of / Mr. Rechart /..." Which of course also sounds like the French pronunciation of Breschard. Mason, as well as Park, listing the sitter to be Breschard?

The story in short; John Bill Ricketts in his brief flash of fortune in America (he was from England) lasting less than 10 years, achieved fame and fortune by his magical ability to peform fantastical acts of daring on his well trained horses - using outlandish tricks, and later featuring other circus performers such as tightrope walkers and clowns. "Long before circuses took on the odor of a crude and common entertainment, Ricketts ... had an air of snob appeal; embraced by all classes, his circus became an especially prestigious venue for the right people to be seen at. After all, Washington, an unabashed fan, attended from time to time through his tenure in office. And the President and Ricketts regularly accompanied each other on rides through the city out into the countryside. Ricketts became such a prominent celebrity that Gilbert Stuart, Washington's portraitist, painted Ricketts, too. Washington even allowed Ricketts to put Jack - the famed white steed he rode through the American Revolution - on display in the amphitheater. Hence, a certain patriotic panache and status boost came with every seat. ......In 1797, Ricketts marked Washington's retirement with a special performance, and later that year, he performed for his friend's presidential successor, John Adams." http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=815

Thus Ricketts meets that special quality which characterizes the majority of Stuart's sitters, a man of action and accomplishment who hobnobbed with the right people, those in the elite and elegant, well-funded social circles. He was in the right place (Philadelphia), and the right time period to cross paths with Stuart. He was multi-talented; besides performing, he built his own circus structures. Just the type of man who might appeal to our artist, who knew so much about everything. And more compelling, the most powerful evidence: The Provenance lists the brother of John Ricketts, Francis Ricketts, as being the first owner (Brown 1861, 320.) The following has been speculated by Ellen Miles: "Stuart undoubtedly painted Ricketts' portrait in Philadelphia, where the circus was based. The portrait remained there, unfinished, after Ricketts left for the West Indies." ("American Paintings of the 18 century" p 210). Is it possible that Stuart didn't complete the portrait, and so whimsically painted the horses' head created from the background, due less to anger than nostalgia that a good friend was gone? Did the portrait remain unfinished because the talented John Ricketts incurred catastrophic financial loss when his circus rotunda building burned to the ground in 1799? His brother was last recorded in the United States in 1810, when he was with the Boston Circus ("American Paintings of the 18 century" p 210), and thus the portrait would have passed to him when John met his death on the oceans in 1803.

But, is it possible the painting was done at a later time, that it was stopped out of frustration with the sitter (Breschard), and that by this time Stuart had become increasingly more willful and temperamental with his sitters corresponding to the extent of his fame? “...the artist, becoming angry at the equestrian, who gave him a good deal of trouble by his want of promptitude and the delays which occurred, is said to have dashed his paintbrush into the face of the portrait, declaring that he would have nothing more to do with him.” J. Thomas Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 (Philadelphia: L.H.Everts and Co. 1884), Vol II, p 1044

The Circus of Pépin and Breschard

Pépin and Breschard were the premiere performers in the U.S. from 1808 until 1815. At left is a playbill for this circus. Our Jean Breschard clearly is a prominent performer, if not the owner alongside Mr. Pepin.

In the Provenance for the Circus Rider shown above, a Peter Grain is listed as the next owner after Francis Ricketts, "Purchased at auction around 1853 by Peter Grain." Peter Grain was an artist, known for his "panorama paintings, landscapes, portraits, theatrical designs, as well as also being a playwright and architect; he was the author of at least one stage play. His family was involved in theatrical design in New York, Philadelphia and other major American cities for at least two generations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Grain

"American Paintings of the 18 century", in 'Notes' on Peter Grain..."A painter, was born in France around 1786... and came to the US sometime before 1815. After living in various American cities, including New York and Charleston, he settled in Philadelphia around 1850 with his family..."
The playbill above shows that Grain could have crossed paths with Breschard in "Charlestown".

In the playbill below, found and kindly provided to me by Peter Breschard, is incontrovertible evidence that in fact Peter Grain knew Breschard in c 1809! Grain was an actor in the play "Billy" performed on this summer eve. Is it not likely that Peter Grain was the one who identified, or at a minimum WOULD BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY the sitter as Jean Breschard, as he knew and even worked with this circus artist? Thus we have reasonable, logical evidence as to HOW the portrait was identified as Breschard. On the basis of this knowledge,...which possibly may not be known by the (current) experts?... might a new look at the identifcation of THE CIRCUS RIDER be in order? Afterall, Someone identified the portrait, because there are the inscriptions, which to my eye look like a French pronunciation of Breschard. How solid, in fact, IS the Brown attribution that Francis Ricketts was the first owner? How credible is this source? Is he known for accuracy? (Thomas Allston Brown, "A Complete History of the Amphitheatre and Circus, from its earliest date, with sketches of some of the principal performers," New York Clipper 8 (19 January 1861).

For more information on Peter Breschard, who has used original sources in his in-depth investigation on the identification of the sitter in this portrait, he can be found at http://brasseriebreschard.blogspot.com/. He plans on writing a book on this topic and hopes to interest a publisher. He would enjoy any input on the subject!

And thus, I have exhausted all effort here, and leave it to the experts & other researchers to thrash this out, and perhaps take a second look at this re-identification from Breschard to Ricketts.
And in the meantime I have the following suggestion. Perhaps there are more descendents out there, from both the Ricketts and Breschard families. In my own case, I was suddenly astonished to notice that there were remarkable similarities between Meeker and some members of my family; below is an example and more will follow. Check the nose! the chin! can you look at younger pictures of your ancestors and find remarkable/notable similarites to the portrait of Ricketts/Breschard? Send them to me! Lets fly with this mystery, and not be stuck with one mind-set.....

Never forget Stuart's ability to nail an almost photographic image to the canvas.................

Below Benjamin Hyde Cory (1896-1983) my grandfather, gg-grandson of Phebe Meeker (twin sister of Samuel Meeker.)

the dimple in the bottom lip... the slightly upraised peak of the right side of the upper lip...rounded chin

John Bill Ricketts or Jean Breschard? Has John Bill Ricketts had his 15 min.....er....40 years ... of fame by being associated with a Stuart portrait?

2010-01-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

There clearly exists some question as to the identity of this particular John, or Jean, as the case may be. John Bill Ricketts? or Jean Baptist Breschard? also a circus owner and equestrian performer, in the Circus of Pepin and Breschard....

This information has been provided to me; "Peter Grain, cited in the “Circus Rider” NGA provenance as owning the painting in the mid-1800s, and as selling the portrait to George W. Riggs, was a member of the Circus of Pépin and Breschard, and would have been capable of identifying the sitter in Stuart’s portrait as Breschard."

and this information has been provided:"....but I had done the provenance research and discussion of the inscriptions, and especially cited an important 1861 source that listed Ricketts' brother Francis as the first owner of the painting. Once you have read that entry, which I think explains more about the inscriptions and the provenance of the painting and thus the ID.... Ellen Miles"

So sooner hopefully rather than later I will read up on the inscriptions (found on the bottom of portrait), and check out the 1861 source. But one must question why Mason, in 1894, listed the painting as "Breschard, the Circus-Rider". And Park claims the inscription on the portrait says "Portrait of Mr. Rechart..." and one could think that the R could actually be a "B", and is the French pronunciation of Breschard.

So.... and, well, Ricketts would have had to have his portrait done by Stuart in the mid to later 1790s (before 1799 when his circus burned to the ground) right about when Stuart would have been obsessively busy with the portraits of George Washington... Ricketts would have been more well known (in this day and age), since Washington sold him his white horse Jack, nice story!

So the Jury is still out...I will work on this, for a misidentification Should be Corrected, should it not? If there is a Peter Grain in the provenance, then I would think that this portrait is not of Ricketts, but is of Jean Breschard. But was Ricketts' brother the first owner of the painting?

I have accidentally fallen into a BOILERPLATE MYSTERY!

*

The random monthly pick: Mr. John Bill Ricketts, equestrian extraordinaire and favorite of George Washington

2010-01-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ricketts lately from London respectfully acquaints the public that he has erected at considerable expense a circus, situated at the corner of Market and Twelfth Streets where he proposes instructing Ladies and Gentlemen in the elegant accomplishments of riding. -The Circus will be opened on Thursday Next, the 25th October 1792. (Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, 23 October 1792)

Sensing opportunity in the young American Republic, John Bill Ricketts left England and opened first an equestrian academy, later turning it into a circus shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia in 1792. By spring 1793 he had trained enough horses to promote the kind of equestrian entertainment he had headlined in London, and for the first month performed alone in the ring “to the delight of the city's amusement-hungry crowds, which included, on April 24, the nation's most distinguished horseman, President George Washington.” http://explorepahistory.com

John Bill Ricketts by Gilbert Stuart ca 1795-99

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Robert B. Noyes in memory of Elisha Riggs. 1942.14.1

This unfinished portrait is of John Bill Ricketts, magical equestrian who rode his talent and riding ability into fame and fortune in the young American Republic, if only for a short period of time. In a spectacular fire in 1799 his circus burned to the ground, he set sail for the West Indies in search of new adventure, was captured by pirates, escaped, regained some of his lost fortune, but upon sailing back to England about 1803, perished forever during the crossing of the seas.

The Stuart portrait was not completed as “...the artist, becoming angry at the equestrian, who gave him a good deal of trouble by his want of promptitude and the delays which occurred, is said to have dashed his paintbrush into the face of the portrait, declaring that he would have nothing more to do with him.” J. Thomas Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 (Philadelphia: L.H.Everts and Co. 1884), Vol II, p 1044

Only the head of Ricketts was completed, but to at least provide some innovation to the picture, Gibby, with a few strokes of the brush, added a few details of a horse’s head to the dark background.

Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Etching of Mr. Bill Ricketts, "the Equestrian Hero," circa 1796.

“A trained horse, named for the old Seneca chief, “Cornplanter,” which would jump over another horse 14 hands (56 inches) high, was also introduced, and several pantomines were brought out successfully. Among Mr. Ricketts’ various feats at this time were his throwing a somersault over 30 men’s heads and over five horses with their mounted riders; her would also ride two horses at full gallop and leap over a garter or ribbon 12 feet high, or ride the same horses, each foot on a quart-mug standing loose on the saddles, and at times would mount on the shoulders of two riders, each standing on a separate horse, “forming a Pyramid 15 feet hight,” a feat never before attempted by any equestrian. Young Ricketts, emulating his father, would leap over a spiked bar or ride around the ring, his head balanced on a pint-mug resting on the saddle; he would also dismount blind-folded, pick up a watch and remount...”
The circus; its origin and growth prior to 1835, Copyright 1909 by Isaac J. Greenwood New York. pps 86-7

and finally, to mark the end of 2009... ein Goethe-Gedicht zum Jahreswechsel:

Das neue Jahr sieht mich freundlich an,

und ich lasse das alte mit seinem Sonnenschein und Wolken

ruhig hinter mir.

Lily and I are NORTH TO ALASKA! but in a weeks time it will be SANTA CRUZ OR Bust!

2009-12-21T16:15:00.000-08:00

with credit to Emikk at stream of consciousness comics

Merry Christmas & a good surf into the

New Year!

Im Wald mit Schlapphut, und "Gardenarbeit!"

2009-12-18T16:56:00.000-08:00

With a friend, in the forest, about 20 min away from where I live. Lots of forests in the mountains behind Santa Cruz.

Me, mit Schlapphut.

I wear the Schlapphut when I garden. This is my backyard, that is Lily over there in the back, see her reading? Thats my German bike in the foreground, and some odd box.

Thats me with Schlapput gardening at a friend's. We put in a lemon tree, a lime tree, and an avocado. That was only about 2 weeks ago.

My front yard.

A photo from the side. Two different kinds of grapes and kiwis grow on this trellis.

As you can see, I enjoy wearing my Schlapphut. And just like my ancestor Meeker, I derive satisfaction from the fruits of the earth! My own.....Fountain Green....

der erste Schultag

2009-12-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

I don't normally do another post so fast, and please don't neglect to look at my previous post on Goethe and Schiller, which, actually I am so proud of! All the time I spent in Germany... in the beginning it was SO difficult when I didn't know the language or the culture. But by midway through the 10 years, a whole new world began to open up which has only enriched my life since then. It makes me sooooo happy, that I am able to tie in this culture to my Meeker painting, and Stuart.

But, I can not resist making this post. My blogging buddy Rouchswalwe , with my persistence, continues on with her own story of ....

the Zuckertüte, a Candy-Cone!

click here for a photo of Lily's first day of school in Jena, Germany

What do Schiller, Goethe, and William Grant (aka THE SKATER, portrait by Gilbert Stuart) have in common? a......HAT

2009-12-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

Schiller (close friend of Goethe) travelling about on his mule in non-fashionable but practical outdoorwear in 1787.

In 1775 Goethe, dissatisfied with a life of being a lawyer in Frankfurt, accepted the invitation from Duke Karl Augustus to his court in Weimar, this tiny town in the middle of the forest of Thuringen. Rather than entering into an official day-to-day job at that point, the duke treated Goethe (already famed as the author of “The Sorrows of Young Werther”), as a friend and the two caused hot gossipy scandal (aristocracy on the same level as a non-noble!) by riding hard on wild jaunts lasting days or weeks through the forested countryside, camping, laughing, playing jokes on the locals, enduring fatigue and displaying physical prowess and love of sport.
Soon enough, settled in Weimar Goethe entered into a complex, not easily definable, virtuous love relationship with Charlotte von Stein, aristocrat at court, seven years older, married with children. The attraction was one of infatuation on Goethe’s part, tempered by the practical, stoic keen intelligence and restrained emotion on the part of the noble Stein, later blossoming into love, yet ending in the sudden departure of Goethe for Italy ten years later.

Charlotte and her husband were the owners of a small country estate called Gross Kochberg ( click here for a sketch of the estate by Goethe, a talented illustrator in his own right) , and here for a photograph. Today by car, one can reach this estate leaving Weimar in about an hour. In those days, it would take a day by horse, or a good 24 hrs to walk. Goethe would do both, to visit the lady of the manor. The tricorne or bicorne hats surely wouldn’t satisfy the need for protection against the elements. I mention all of this because, as many of you know, the weather in Germany can be really horrible; freezing and snowy in the winter, rain and thunder in the summer. So that romping through the wilderness that then existed between Weimar and Jena, or trekking to the country house of the beloved, all means that “weather appropriate” clothing is a necessity. In particular, a hat to protect the eyes and neck from the sun, providing warmth and protection from rain and snow, would be a must in those days when reaching a destination by walking or horseback was the norm... The tricorne or bicorne? no way. Thus, I believe that William Grant used, for his portrait, a FASHIONABLE form of this type of outdoorwear, nominally known in GERMANY as the Schlapphut. To see Goethe in Schlapphut click here.

the Skater (William Grant) by Gilbert Stuart 1782 National Gallery of Art

Is this a man projecting melancholy? (As proposed in Gilbert Stuart by Barratt and Miles referencing both Presssly and Evans). I believe, in short, this is a man of fashionable elegance and atheletic prowess and skill, with an air of happy self-satisfaction, to be out getting exercise!

The Barratt/Miles book describes the hat worn by the Skater as a “wide-awake hat” which makes no sense to me. The definition of a “wide-awake hat” is variably descibed as “inspired by the paramilitary campaign organization of the 1860s”, “popular in the American West during the late 1800's”, “affiliated with the Republican Party during the 1860 election” OR best definition “a hat with a low crown and very wide brim”.
Thus Grant chose a hat suitable for the weather for an outside activity on such a grey day; warm, protective against a possible snow flurry while engaging in sport out in nature, yet clearly an article of FASHIONABLE OUTDOORWEAR with a band around the base of the crown decorated with a buckle (as well as fancy buckles on his shoe/skates!). His whole outfit portrays elegance and up-to-date, practical fashion and proper gear for skating. Notice the peep of a tan leather glove, also indicative of expensive fashion, and the fur lapels. The stance, arms crossed, puts the viewer on notice that the skater has perfect balance, ie atheletic prowess, as he skates perfect circles etched into the ice. Notice in the background, the unfashionable bi-and tri-corne hats on the MEN, with arms flailing and legs wide apart, and ...poor saps... wearing NO GLOVES!

I believe that with the soaring popularity of Goethe, Schiller, and Kauffmann both in Europe and abroad, all promoting the love of nature at this time, the Schlapphut, already made popular by the German artists in Rome, became THE current article of fashion and can also be described as the headgear being worn by Stuart in his self-portrait.

I dedicate this blog to my daughter Lily, on my first blogiversary!

2009-12-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

This blog is dedicated to Lily. Soon she will be spreading her diamantiferous wings, and flying away.

Harbor Highschool class photo, class of 2010, Santa Cruz California

Here is a bouquet of roses for Lily Grace!

And a 1998 photo of Lily, on the first day of school at the Nord Schule in Jena (Deutschland). Each child comes to the school, on the first day, with a "Zucker Tute" which is made by the parent, filled with candies and special delights. Naturally this makes for an

EXCITING DAY !!!!

my darling child, now grown up.

"Pure as the Lily, by the Grace of God."

~

Swiss/Austrian painter and friend of Goethe; Angelika Kauffmann-- "The whole world is angelikamad!"... an unquestionable influence on GS

2009-12-05T19:22:00.001-08:00

Portrait of Antonio Zucchi by Angelika Kauffmann, c. 1782

Portrait of William Grant by Gilbert Stuart 1782 (in England) The Skater

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART Andrew W. Mellon Collection
~

Anna Maria Angelika Catharina Kauffmann, self portrait in Wälder Tracht

Innsbruck, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum

For more on Angelika's (Possible/Highly Likely) Influence on Stuart (compare Kauffmann's portrait of Joshua Reynolds & Stuart's portrait of Benjamin Waterhouse posts March 11/12) click here.

In 1767 Angelika was caught up in an affair of the heart; she met and married an attractive elegant young man and quickly, rashly entered into a secret marriage. His name... 'Count Frederick de Horn'. After the marriage he insisted on taking over Kauffmann's financial affairs, she resisted and ultimately the marriage was undone when Frederick turned out to be an imposter.

In 1781, after the quick dissolution of this first marriage, Angelika wed the Venetian painter Antonio Zucchi (portrait above). The couple moved to the capital of the artworld, Rome. Her house on the Pincio, once inhabited by the painter Anton Raphael Mengs, became the social center of the European intellectual elite and bastion for lovers of art.

"In den siebziger Jahren [1870s] war die Nachfrage [demand] nach Gemälde und Nachstichen Kauffmanns oder nach Kauffmannesken Motiven so überwältigend, dass der dänische Botschafter Schönborn am 19. Oktober 1781 am Klopstock schrieb [wrote]: "the whole world is angelicamad"; ein Satz, der längst zum geflügelten Wort geworden ist.....

IN ENGLAND erlangte Kauffmanns Kunst internationalen Verbreitungsgrad allein durch die zahlreichen Punktierstiche, die nach ihren Werken gefertigt wurden....." from "Angelika Kauffmann 1741-1807 'Eine Dichterin mit dem Pinsel" Verlag Gerd Hatje, Dusseldorf 1998 p 31

"... die vielleicht cultivierteste Frau der Welt ...." Zeitgenosse Herder über Angelika Kauffmann

The random monthly pick: Russell Sturgis, a Boston merchant involved in trade of hats, furs...... & ...opium.

2009-12-01T11:02:00.000-08:00

Russell Sturgis Boston c 1822 by Gilbert Stuart

Worcester Art Museum; Gift of the Paine Charitable Trust, 1965.254

from Lawrence Park:
Russell Sturgis (1750-1826) was the second son of Thomas Sturgis (1722-1785) and Sarah, or Sally (Paine) Sturgis of Barnstable, Massachusetts. In 1773 he married Elizabeth Perkins. In or before 1771 he moved to Boston and started in the hat and fur trade. It is interesting to note that his name appears in the first Boston directory, published in 1789. He was a close friend of Gilbert Stuart, who painted three portraits of him.

Russell got his start in the hat and fur trade by apprenticing to his wife’s grandfather in Boston at age 16. He served in the Massachusetts milita, and was active in public affairs; fire warden in earlier years and worked as a representative for Boston in the Massachusetts state senate. "Sturgis's two brothers-in-laws were notable China traders. In 1795 Sturgis joined them in ownership of a new ship, the Grand Turk, which was sent to Canton in March 1796. When the Perkins brothers opened a branch office in Canton in 1803, Sturgis invested substantially, and three of Sturgis's sons subsequently voyaged to China. In 1818 all three were involved in the opium trade as partners in the firm of James P. Sturgis and Company." information from Wiki