The De Vinne Press certifies that fifty copies of this book were
printed on Dickinson antique hand-made paper, of which this is No.
____
BROWERE’S LIFE
MASKS OF GREAT
AMERICANS
[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON
Age 82]
BROWERE’S LIFE
MASKS OF GREAT
AMERICANS BY
CHARLES HENRY HART
[Illustration]
PRINTED AT THE DE VINNE
PRESS FOR DOUBLEDAY AND
McCLURE COMPANY 1899
Copyright, 1897, 1898, by S. S. MCCLURE CO.
Copyright, 1899, by DOUBLEDAY & MCCLURE CO.
TO THE MEMORY OF
JAMES P. SMITH
MINIATURE PAINTER
WHO FIRST DEVELOPED MY TASTE FOR ART
I INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME AS A
TOKEN OF GRATITUDE
Proem_
“Great oaks from little acorns grow.” How big results may flow from
small beginnings is typically illustrated by the possibilities of the
present volume. It began with the bare knowledge that there was, once
upon a time, a man by the name of Browere, who had some facility in
making masks from the living face. This was the seed that was destined
to expand into the present publication. To tell how this germ grew,
would be to anticipate the recital in the following pages; but the
lively interest shown by the wide public and by the narrow public, the
people and the artistic circle, in the articles upon Browere’s Life
Masks of Great Americans, contributed by the writer to “McClure’s
Magazine,” has called for a more expanded history of the artist and his
work, for which fortunately there is ample material.
To the grandchildren of Browere, who have reverently preserved the works
of their ingenious ancestor and generously placed them at my disposal
for reproduction, are due the heartiest thanks; and in view of the
possibility of the dispersal of the collection, it should be secured,
_en bloc_, by the Government of the United States, and the most
important of the life masks cast in imperishable bronze.
CHARLES HENRY HART.
Philadelphia, October 1, 1898.
Contents_
PAGE
Proem ix
I The Plastic Art 1
II The Plastic Art in America 4
III John Henri Isaac Browere 12
IV The Captors of André 28
V Discovery of the Life Mask of Jefferson 36
VI Three Generations of Adamses 50
VII Mr. and Mrs. Madison 56
VIII Charles Carroll of Carrollton 60
IX The Nation’s Guest, La Fayette 63
X De Witt Clinton 70
XI Henry Clay 73
XII America’s Master Painter, Gilbert Stuart 76
XIII David Porter, United States Navy 93
XIV Richard Rush 98
XV Edwin Forrest 102
XVI Martin Van Buren 104
XVII Death Mask of James Monroe 109
Addendum to Chapter VIII 115
_List of Plates_
Thomas Jefferson, Profile _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
John H. I. Browere 12
John Paulding 28
Isaac Van Wart 32
David Williams 34
Thomas Jefferson 40
John Adams 50
John Quincy Adams 52
Charles Francis Adams 54
James Madison 56
“Dolly” Madison 58
Charles Carroll 60
Marquis de La Fayette 66
De Witt Clinton 70
Henry Clay 74
Gilbert Stuart 78
David Porter 94
Richard Rush 98
Edwin Forrest 102
Martin Van Buren 104
James Monroe’s Death Mask 112
LIFE MASKS
I
_The Plastic Art_
The plastic art, which is the art of modelling in the round with a
pliable material, was with little doubt the earliest development of the
imitative arts. To an untrained mind it is a more obvious method, of
copying or delineating an object, than by lines on a flat surface. Its
origin is so early and so involved in myths and legends, that any
attempt to ascribe its invention, to a particular nation or to a
particular individual, is impossible. Its earliest form was doubtless
monumental. Frequent passages in the Scriptures show this, and that the
Hebrews practised it, as did also their neighbors the Phœnicians;
while excavations have revealed the early plastic monuments of the
Assyrians. For more than two thousand years the Egyptians are known to
have associated the plastic arts with their religious worship, but,
being bound within priestly rules, made no perceptible progress from
its beginning; yet these crude monuments of ancient Egypt are now the
records of the world’s history of their time.
Associated with architecture from its earliest development, it has, in
its narrower form of sculpture, been called, not inaptly, “the daughter
of architecture.” Indeed, in the remains of ancient monuments, the two
arts are so intimately combined, that architecture is frequently
subordinated to sculpture, particularly in the buildings of the middle
ages, where they appear as very twin sisters, sculpture often supplying
structural parts of the erection.
Among the Greeks the plastic art existed from time immemorial, and among
them attained its highest proficiency and skill. That they exceeded all
others in this art goes without saying; their familiarity with the human
form enabling them to portray corporal beauty with a delicacy and
perfection, that no society, reared in any other situation or surrounded
by other influences, could ever attain. With them beauty was the chief
aim, it having in their eyes so great a value that everything was
subservient to it. As has been said, “It was above law, morality,
modesty, and justice.” Greek art, as we know it, began about 600 B.C.;
but it did not arrive at its perfection until the time of Pericles, a
century and a half later, in the person of Pheidias, who consummately
illustrates its most striking characteristics--the simplicity with which
great efforts are attained, and the perfect harmony which obtains
between the desire and the conception, the realization and the
execution. The frieze of the Parthenon, which easily holds the supreme
place among known works of sculpture, is ample proof of this.
It was a Greek of the time of Alexander the Great, in the century
following that of Pheidias, who invented the art of taking casts from
the human form. This honor, according to Pliny, belongs to Lysistratus,
a near relative of the famous sculptor Lysippus, who made life casts
with such infinite skill as to produce strikingly accurate resemblances.
The art of making life casts did not, however, come into general use
until the middle of the fifteenth century, when Andrea Verocchio, the
most noted pupil of Donatello, and the instructor of Perugini and of
Leonardo da Vinci, followed it with such success as to lead Vasari,
Bottari, and others to ascribe to him its invention. It was this art of
taking casts from the human form, so successfully followed in this
country, nearly four hundred years later, by John Henri Isaac Browere,
that has afforded the occasion for the present work.
II
_The Plastic Art in America_
Before entering upon the subject of Browere and his life masks, it seems
proper, if not actually necessary, to take a survey of the development
of the plastic art in that part of America now embraced within the
limits of the United States, prior to the time of Browere, so as to
understand what influences may have been exerted upon him in the
direction of his career. This becomes the more important from the fact
that while there have appeared in print, from time to time, numerous
references to this subject, not a single consideration of the topic,
known to the writer, has presented the facts with that accuracy without
which all deductions must be in vain. From the present consideration the
plastic work of the aborigines is necessarily excluded, as it belongs to
another and very different department of study; this having to do with a
branch of the fine arts, and that with a phase of archæology.
Prior to the war of the Revolution, while there were among us several
painters exercising their art, both those of foreign and those of native
birth, no note has come down of any modeller or sculptor in our midst,
save one--a very remarkable woman named Patience Wright. It may be that
we had no need for the sculptor’s art. We were mere colonies without
call for statues or for monuments. It is true there was the leaden
figure of King George, on the Bowling Green, in New York; but it came
from the mother country, and soon furnished bullets for her rebellious
sons. Likewise came from across the ocean the odd bits of decoration
intended as architectural aids in the building of old Christ Church, in
Philadelphia, and of a few other noted buildings. But our first
practitioner of the plastic art was, as has been said, a woman.
Patience Lovell was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, of Quaker parentage,
in 1725, and died in London, March 23, 1786. When twenty-three she
married Joseph Wright, who, twenty-one years later, left her a widow
with three children. She had early shown her aptitude for modelling,
using dough, putty, or any other material that came in her way; and,
being left by her husband unprovided for, she made herself known by her
small portraits in wax, chiefly profile bas-reliefs. In 1772, she sought
a wider field for her abilities by removing to London, where for many
years she was the rage, not only for her plastic work, but for her
extraordinary conversational powers, which drew to her all the political
and social leaders of the day. By this means she was kept fully advised
as to the momentous events transpiring relative to the colonies; and
being on terms of familiar intercourse with Doctor Franklin (whose
profile she admirably modelled, it being afterward reproduced by
Wedgwood), she communicated her information regularly to him, as shown
by her numerous letters preserved in his manuscript correspondence.
Mrs. Wright had a piercing eye, which seems to have penetrated to the
very soul of her sitters, and enabled her to read their inner-selves and
fix their characters in their features. Of her three children, one
daughter married John Hoppner, the eminent portrait-painter; another,
Elizabeth Pratt, followed her mother’s profession of modelling small
portraits in wax; and the son, Joseph, we shall have occasion to mention
on a subsequent page. Some idea may be gathered of the meritorious
quality of Mrs. Wright’s work from the fact that she modelled in wax a
whole-length statue of the great Chatham, which, protected in a glass
case, was honored with a place in Westminster Abbey. Although Patience
Wright never aspired to what is recognized as high art, still her
abilities were of a high order, and her career is a most interesting one
to follow and reflect upon, as she was the first native American, of
American parentage, to follow the art of modelling as a profession. Her
knowledge must have been wholly self-acquired, and in an environment not
conducive to the development of an artistic temperament.
Mrs. Wright is not known to have essayed sculpture, or to have worked in
any resisting material, so that the first native American sculptor was
William Rush. He was born in Philadelphia, July 4, 1756, being fourth in
direct descent from John Rush, who commanded a troop of horse in
Cromwell’s army, and, having embraced the principles of the Quakers,
came to Pennsylvania the year following the landing of William Penn.
From the emigrant John Rush was also descended, in the fifth generation,
the celebrated Benjamin Rush, physician and politician, and one of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence. The father of William was
Joseph Rush, who married, at Christ Church, Philadelphia, September 19,
1750, Rebecca Lincoln, daughter of Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield
Township, now in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She was of the same
family as Abraham Lincoln, the martyr President of the United States. I
am thus minute in tracing the ancestry of William Rush, in order to
establish and place upon record, beyond a question or doubt, that he was
the first American sculptor by birth and parentage, and thus set at
rest, the claim, so frequently made, that this honor belongs to John
Frazee,[1] a man not born until 1790.
Rush served in the army of the Revolution, and it was not until after
peace had settled on the land that he seems to have turned his attention
to art. He soon became noted for the life-like qualities he put into the
figureheads, for the prows of ships, he was called upon to carve, and so
noted did these works become, that many orders came to him from Britain,
for figureheads for English ships. The story is told that when a famous
East Indiaman, the _Ganges_, sailed up that river, to Calcutta, with a
figure of a river-god, carved by Rush, at its prow, the natives
clambered about it as an object of adoration and of worship. Benjamin H.
Latrobe, the noted architect, in a discourse before the Society of
Artists of the United States, in 1811, says, speaking of Rush: “His
figures, forming the head or prow of a vessel, place him, in the
excellence of his attitudes and actions, among the best sculptors that
have existed; and in the proportion and drawing of his figures he is
often far above mediocrity and seldom below it. There is a motion in his
figures that is inconceivable. They seem rather to draw the ship after
them than to be impelled by the vessel. Many are of exquisite beauty. I
have not seen one on which there is not the stamp of genius.”
Rush was a man of warm imagination and of a lively ideality. These are
shown by his figures symbolical of Strength, Wisdom, Beauty, Faith,
Hope, and Charity, carved by him for the Masonic Temple; by his figures
of “Praise” and “Exaltation,” two cherubim encircled by glory, in St.
Paul’s Episcopal Church; and by his “Christ on the Cross,” carved for
St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church. His best-known work is his
whole-length statue of Washington, carved in 1815, from recollection, by
the aid of Houdon’s bust, which it closely resembles, now in the old
State-house, or Independence Hall, Philadelphia. Another noted work of
his, from Miss Vanuxem, a celebrated Quaker City belle, having posed for
the model, is the graceful figure of a nymph, with a swan, located upon
a rocky perch opposite the wheel-house at Fairmount water-works,
Philadelphia.
Beside carving in wood, Rush modelled in clay, and his portrait-busts
have always been recognized as truthful and satisfactory likenesses. The
bust most commonly seen of Lafayette is his work. William Rush died in
the city of his birth on the seventeenth day of January, 1833; and
considering the era in which he lived and its uncongenial atmosphere,
his achievement is most noteworthy and commendable.
Twelve days after the birth of Rush, Joseph Wright came into the world,
inheriting from his mother her artistic temperament. At sixteen he
accompanied the family to England, and received instruction from
Benjamin West and from his brother-in-law, Hoppner. He returned to
America late in 1782, bringing a letter of commendation from Franklin to
Washington. In 1783, he painted a portrait of Washington from life, at
Rocky Hill, New Jersey, and the next year was permitted to make a cast
of Washington’s face, which is said to have been broken irreparably in
removing from the skin,--a story the veracity of which may be akin to
that in regard to Browere’s mask of Jefferson, hereafter to be told.
However this may be, Wright made a bust of Washington, for which
Congress paid him “233⅓ dollars,” and also modelled in wax a
laureated profile portrait of Washington, which is of both artistic and
historical value. Wright died in Philadelphia, during the yellow fever
epidemic of December, 1793, and his bust, by his friend Rush, whom he is
said to have instructed in clay modelling, belongs to the Academy of the
Fine Arts, at Philadelphia.
Patience Wright, her son Joseph, and William Rush are the only native
Americans that we know to have worked at the plastic art during the
period we have limited for this review; and thus John Frazee, who
claimed to be, and therefore is commonly credited with being, the first
native American sculptor of American parentage, need not be considered;
for he was only two years old when Browere was born, and therefore can
have had no part in influencing Browere’s career.
There were, however, two foreigners who certainly did exercise a decided
influence upon art in America, and cannot properly be omitted from any
consideration of the causes that helped the plastic art onward in these
United States. Both of them were men of commanding ability and
importance in sculpture. One was the eminent French statuary Houdon, who
visited this country in 1785, to prepare himself to produce his famous
statue of Washington; and the other, the not much less able Italian,
Giuseppe Ceracchi, who came here, in 1791, for love of freedom, and
lived among us about four years. Ceracchi’s plan for an elaborate
monument to commemorate the American Revolution, which was warmly taken
up by Washington and members of the cabinet, and received the
consideration of Congress, made his artistic proclivities better known,
and gave the subject a wider range than the limited scope of Houdon’s
work. Yet the influence of both these eminent devotees of the plastic
art left, without doubt, a strong impression upon the minds of the
people--an impression constantly refreshed by the sight of their works,
which helped to create a healthy atmosphere for the development of a
taste among us for the plastic art.
NOTE. John Dixey, an Irishman about whom little is known, and John
Eckstein, a German by birth and an Englishman by adoption and
education, settled here toward the close of the last century, and
both did some work in modelling and in stone-cutting; but they were
of mediocre ability, and left no impression upon the artistic
instinct of the people.
III
_John Henri Isaac Browere_
What one generation fails to appreciate, and therefore decries and
sneers at, a subsequent one comprehends and applauds. It is
conspicuously so in discovery, in science, in poetry, and in art; so
much depends upon the point of view and the environment of the observed
and of the observer. Were these remarks not true, the very remarkable
collection of busts from life masks, taken at the beginning of the
second quarter of the present century, by John Henri Isaac Browere,
almost an unknown name a year ago, would not have been hidden away until
their recent unearthing. The circumstances that led to their discovery
are as curious as that the busts should have been neglected and
forgotten for so long.
John Henri Isaac Browere, the son of Jacob Browere and Ann Catharine
Gendon, was born at No. 55, Warren Street,
[Illustration: JOHN HENRI ISAAC BROWERE]
New York city, November 18, 1792, and died at his house opposite the old
mile-stone, in the Bowery, in the city of his birth, September 10, 1834,
and was buried in the Carmine Street Churchyard. He was of Dutch
descent, one of those innumerable claimants of heirship to Anneke Jans,
through Adam Brouwer, of Ceulen, who came to this country and settled on
Long Island, in 1642. Adam Brouwer’s name was really Berkhoven, but the
name of his business, Brouwer or Brewer, became attached to him, so that
his descendants have been transmitted by his trade-name, and thus, as is
often the case, a new surname introduced. His second son, Jacob Adam
Brouwer, or Jacob son of Adam the Brewer, married Annetje Bogardus,
granddaughter of Reverend Edward Bogardus and Anneke Jansen (corrupted
to Jans); and among the most persistent pursuers of the intangible
fortune of Anneke Jans has been the family of Browere.
John Browere was entered as a student at Columbia College, but did not
remain to be graduated, owing doubtless to his early marriage, on April
30, 1811, to Eliza Derrick, of London, England. He turned his attention
to art and became a pupil of Archibald Robertson, the miniature-painter,
who came to this country from Scotland, in 1791, with a commission from
David Stuart, Earl of Buchan, to paint, for his gallery at Aberdeen, a
portrait of Washington. Later on, Archibald Robertson, with his brother
Alexander, opened at No. 79, Liberty Street, New York, the well-known
Columbian Academy, where, for thirty years, these Scotchmen maintained a
school, for the instruction of both sexes in drawing and in painting,
and where Vanderlyn, Inman, Cummings, and other of the early New York
artists, profited by their training. At the present time, when
miniature-painting is again coming into vogue, it is interesting to
reflect that the letters which passed between Archibald Robertson in
this country, and his brother Andrew in Scotland, form the best treatise
that can be found upon the charming art of painting in little. These
letters, after having remained in manuscript for the better part of a
century, have recently been given to the public, in a charming volume of
“Letters and Papers of Andrew Robertson,” edited by his daughter, Miss
Emily Robertson, of Lansdowne Terrace, Hampton Wick, England.
Determined to improve himself still further, Browere accepted the offer
of his brother, who was captain of a trading-vessel to Italy, to
accompany him abroad; and for nearly two years the young man travelled
on foot through Italy, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, France, and
England, diligently studying art and more especially sculpture.
Returning to New York, he began modelling, and soon produced a bust of
Alexander Hamilton, from Archibald Robertson’s well-known miniature of
the Federal martyr, which was pronounced a meritorious attempt to
produce a model in the round from a flat surface. Being of an inventive
turn, he began experimenting to obtain casts from the living face in a
manner and with a composition different from those commonly employed by
sculptors. After many trials and failures, he perfected his process,
with the superior results shown in his work.
Browere’s first satisfactory achievement was a mask of his friend and
preceptor, Robertson, and his second was that of Judge Pierrepont
Edwards, of Connecticut. But the most important of his very early works
was the mask of John Paulding, the first to die of the captors of André;
and this mask, made in 1817, was followed later by masks of Paulding’s
coadjutors, Williams and Van Wart; so that we owe to Browere’s nimble
fingers the only authentic likenesses we have of these conspicuous
patriots of the Revolution.
Browere wrote verse and painted pictures in addition to his modelling,
and, in the spring of 1821, made an exhibition at the old gallery of the
American Academy of the Fine Arts, in Chambers Street, New York, which
called forth the following card from his early instructor, Robertson,
who was one of the directors of the Academy. It is interesting,
notwithstanding the unconscious partiality one is apt to have for a
former pupil, and is addressed:
_To the American Public._
Having for many years been intimately acquainted with John H. I.
Browere, of the City of New York, I deem it a duty which I owe to
him as an artist, and to the public as judges, to say that from my
own observation of his works both as a painter, poet, and sculptor,
I think him endowed with a great genius by nature and first talents
by industry. This my opinion, his works lately exhibited in the
Gallery of the American Academy of Fine Arts, New York, fully
justify and is amply corroborated by all, who with unprejudiced
eye, view the works of his hand.
ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON.
NEW YORK, May 21, 1821.
It was left, however, for “The Nation’s Guest” to lift Browere’s art
into prominence. At the request of the New York city authorities,
Lafayette permitted Browere, in July of 1825, to make a cast of his
face. This was so successful that from this time on, Browere was devoted
to making casts of the most noted characters in the country’s history,
who were then living, with the purpose of forming a national gallery of
the busts of famous Americans. He intended to have them reproduced in
bronze, and devoted years of labor and the expenditure of much money to
the furtherance of his scheme. He wrote to Madison: “Pecuniary emolument
never has been my aim. The honor of being favored by my country biases
sordid views.” In 1828 he wrote to the same: “I have expended $12,087 in
the procuration of the specimens I now have.” These included masks of
Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and later
was added that of Van Buren; Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Lafayette;
De Witt Clinton; Generals Philip Van Cortlandt, Alexander Macomb and
Jacob Brown; Commodore David Porter; Secretary of the Navy Samuel L.
Southard of New Jersey; and Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush of
Pennsylvania; Justice of the United States Supreme Court Philip
Pendleton Barbour; and the great commoner, Henry Clay; Doctors Samuel
Latham Mitchill, Valentine Mott, and David Hosack; Edwin Forrest and Tom
Hilson, the actors; Charles Francis Adams and Philip Hone; Thomas Addis
Emmet and Doctor Cooper of South Carolina; Colonel Stone and Major Noah,
of newspaper notoriety; Dolly Madison and Francis Wright; Gilbert
Stuart, Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart; and other personages favorably
known in their day, but who have slipped out of the niche of worldly
immortality, so that even their names fail to awaken a recollection of
themselves. Such is the mutability of fame.
The time, however, was not ripe for the public patronage of the Fine
Arts. There was, too, a feeling abroad that it savored of monarchy and
favored classes, to perpetuate men and deeds by statues and monuments.
Another cause that hampered Browere was the lack of protection accorded
to such works. He complains to Madison: “I regret to say that as yet no
law has been passed to protect modelling and sculpture, and therefore I
have been hindered from completing the gallery, fearful of having the
collection pirated.” So disheartened did he become with the little
interest shown in his project and the work he had accomplished for it,
that at one time he contemplated visiting Panama, and presenting the
busts of the more prominent subjects to the republics of South America,
in order to incite them to further efforts for freedom. Finally he was
forced to abandon his scheme of a national gallery, owing to want of
support, and the direct opposition--“jealous enmity,” Browere calls
it--of his brother artists, the old American Academy faction led by
Colonel Trumbull, and the new National Academy followers led by William
Dunlap.
They maligned his pretensions because he was honest enough to call his
method for accomplishing what he attempted “_a process_.” Surely,
judging from results, it was superior to any other known method of
obtaining a life mask, and it seems most unfortunate that his “process”
has to be counted among “the lost arts”; for neither he nor his son, who
was acquainted with both the composition and the method of applying it,
has left a word of information on the subject. When the public press
attacked Browere and his method for the rumored maltreatment of
President Jefferson, he replied: “Mr. Browere never has followed and
never will follow the usual course, knowing it to be fallacious and
absolutely bad. The manner in which he executes portrait-busts from
life is unknown to all but himself, and the invention is his own, for
which he claims exclusive rights, but it is infinitely milder than the
usual course.” That his method of taking the mask was accomplished
without discomfort to the subject is fully attested by the number of
persons who submitted to it, as also by the many certificates given by
Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Lafayette, Gilbert Stuart, and others to that
effect.
In the following letter from Browere to Trumbull it will be seen the
writer does not attempt to conceal his feelings of resentment:
NEW YORK, 12 July, 1826.
_Sir_:
The very illiberal and ungentleman-like manner in which Col.
Trumbull treated the execution, &c., of my portrait-busts of
Ex-President Adams and Honorable Charles Carroll with the statue of
Ex-President Jefferson, late displayed in the banquetting hall of
the Hon. Common Council of New York, has evidenced a personal
ill-will and hostility to me that I shall not pass over in silence.
The envy and jealousy inherent in your nature and expressed in
common conversations intimate to me a man of a perverse and
depraved mind.
Rest assured, Sir, I fear not competition with you as a portrait or
historic painter; I know your fort, and your failings. To convince
you that I know somewhat of the Arts of Design, I shall
immediately commence an analysis of your four pictures painted for
Congress, and shall endeavor therein to refer to each and every
figure plagiarized from English and other prints. Your assertion to
me that you made your portraits therein to correspond with their
characters, will assuredly go for as much as they deserve. In my
opinion, ideal likenesses ought not to be palmed on a generous
public for real ones.
Remember what was said on the floor of Congress in reference to
your four celebrated pictures: “Instead of being worth $32,000 they
were not worth 32 cents.” In remembering this remember that “nemo
me impune lacessit.” And by attending to your own concerns you will
retain a reputation or name of being an able artist and not a
slanderer.
BROWERE, _Sculptor_.
Colonel Trumbull has endorsed this letter: “_Browere. Poor man! too much
vanity hath made him mad._”
However, from a letter written three years later to the Directors of the
American Academy of the Fine Arts, and “_Favored by Col. Trumbull_,” it
would appear that the two artists had healed their differences; but
Browere’s feeling of resentment toward the National Academy of Design
knew no abatement. He was kept out of the National Academy by Dunlap,
who also ignored him in his malevolent and unreliable “History of the
Arts of Design in the United States.” The cause for this, as stated by
Browere’s son, was that before Browere had ever met Dunlap he was asked
his opinion of Dunlap’s painting of “Death on the Pale Horse,” then on
public exhibition. He replied: “It’s a strong work, but looks as if it
were painted by a man with but one eye.” This remark was reported to
Dunlap, who actually had but one eye. He was mortally offended at the
sculptor’s insight, and became his undying enemy. Browere wrote to the
Academy as follows:
NEW YORK, 31 July, 1829.
_Gentlemen_:
For several years past I have strictly devoted myself to the
profession of the liberal arts and flatter myself that my efforts
have not been detrimental to their interests. The reason why or
wherefore I, an American artist, bearing with me an unblemished
moral reputation, should have been selected for exclusion by both
the American Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the self-denominated
Academy of Design, appears mysterious and illiberal, and not in
accordance with the principles of religion or democracy. Had not an
enthusiastic love of and devotion to the Fine Arts guided my
reason, at this day I should have become one of the most inveterate
enemies to both institutions. Philosophy has made me what I now am,
viz., the sincere friend of man and admirer of the works of his
hands. As such I have,--written injuries as sand--favors on the
tablet of memory.
As one of the great body of artists of America I deem it an
incumbent duty to advance the beauteous arts by all honorable
means, and to chastise arrogance, presumption, ignorance, and
wilful malevolence. With chagrin I have viewed the sinister and
aristocratical proceedings of the National Academy, and the ill
results that must eventually follow its longer continuance, and
therefore have publicly deprecated its wickedness. As one of the
regenerators of the old or American Academy of Fine Arts, I now
make bold in saying to its directors a few things, which if duly
weighed and followed must result favorably to its vitality and best
interests, and be the medium of establishing the reputation of
artists on firm and lasting basis, viz.: by collecting around the
American Academy and with it all the genius and talent in the arts
of design which our country possesses and creating a fund
sufficient to all its wants and expenditures.
Already, twenty-five artists of respectability of this city await
one effort of the American Academy to reëstablish its original
standing and reputation, and they will join heart and hand to
oppose the Academy of Design (truly so called) by every work of
their hands done and to be done. The one effort alluded to is to
procure at a reasonable rent say from 800 to 1000 dollars per annum
the second story of the large and splendid building now erecting
corner of Anthony Street and Broadway. The undersigned is perfectly
well assured that from $1000 to $1500 per annum can be realized
(exclusive of rent) from daily exhibitions of the works of living
artists not in connection with the National Academy. He is fully
satisfied from late observations that twenty-five new pieces or
paintings can be procured monthly, all of which may be procured on
loan for one month at least. This being the case the Academy must
eventually and in a very short time supplant the puny efforts of a
few National Esquires, a majority of whom are scarce entering their
teens.
The subscribing artist respectfully informs you that the exhibition
of the rough specimens of his art, viz., “The Inquisition of
Spain,” at No. 315 Broadway, did positively realize to him, in
eighteen months, _Seven thousand and sixty-nine dollars_. If, then,
such an exhibition could realize such a sum, what would an
exhibition of splendid historic and allegoric subjects, with
portraits, miniatures, and landscapes by our native artists, not
realize under the guidance of such a respectable board of directors
as is that of the American Academy of Fine Arts?
The names of Trumbull, Vanderlyn, Frothingham, etc., alone would
act as magic on a discriminating public, provided fair specimens of
their talents be judiciously arranged for public inspection. Boston
has done wonders this year in her Athenæum. Why, then, should we,
equally blessed with native talent, despair, and sit down in
sack-cloth and ashes, when a single effort can make us her equal
and rival? Gentlemen, I am enthusiastic, and yet have maturely
weighed each and every reason against your regeneration, and boldly
assert more is for you than against you. The three preceding
mentioned gentlemen are equal to, if not superior in talent to, any
Boston can produce. Our portrait-painters generally bid fair to
excel. All that is wanted is your help as a body corporate, your
co-operation as lovers of the Fine Arts. Where, if you become
extinct, shall we go to study the models of antiquity? Alas! we
know of no other place wherein the experience of ages is collected,
en masse, no place wherein to receive that instruction so essential
to a knowledge of our profession. Mr. Bowen, the proprietor, has
offered to you through Colonel Trumbull, the room alluded to at a
fair compensation; it now rests with you to say for once and for
all, “We will,” or, “we will not continue the patrons of art.”
Wishing to yourselves individually, and collectively as a body
corporate, health and peace, I remain,
Gentlemen, truly your Friend in the Fine Arts,
JOHN H. I. BROWERE.
No formal action is known to have been taken upon this communication;
but the antagonism plainly evident as existing between the new Academy
of Design and the old Academy of the Fine Arts, forms a lively chapter
in the history of American art. Full particulars of the strife are given
in Dunlap’s book and in Cummings’s “Historic Annals of the National
Academy of Design.” But these accounts are from biased adherents of the
new institution and bitter opponents of the old, so that, for a brief
but philosophical and judicial consideration of the subject, one must
turn to John Durand’s sketch of Colonel Trumbull in the “American Art
Review” for 1880.
Browere died, after only a few hours’ illness, of cholera; and it is
pathetic to picture the disappointed sculptor, on his deathbed,
directing, as he did, that the heads should be sawed off the most
important busts, and boxed up for forty years, at the end of which
period he hoped their exhibition would elicit recognition for their
merit and value as historical portraits from life. This directed
mutilation was not made; but the busts never saw the light of day until
the Centennial year, when a few of them were placed on exhibition in
Philadelphia. But not being connected with the national celebration,
they were a mere side-show, and were not in a position to attract
attention. Indeed, the fact of their exhibition was unheralded, and has
only recently become known.
Call Browere’s work what one will,--process, art, or mechanical,--the
result gives the most faithful portrait possible, down to the minutest
detail, the very living features of the breathing man, a likeness of
the greatest historical significance and importance. A single glance
will show the marked difference between Browere’s work and the ordinary
life cast by the sculptor or modeller, no matter how skilful he may be.
Browere’s work is real, human, lifelike, inspiring in its truthfulness,
while other life masks, even the celebrated ones by Clark Mills, who
made so many, are dead and heavy, almost repulsive in their
lifelessness. It seems next to marvelous how he was able to preserve so
wonderfully the naturalness of expression. His busts are imbued with
animation; the individual character is there, so simple and direct that,
next to the living man, he has preserved for us the best that we can
have--a perfect _facsimile_. One experiences a satisfaction in
contemplating these busts similar to that afforded by the reflected
image of the daguerreotype. Both may be “inartistic” in the sense that
the artist’s conception is wanting; but for historical human documents
they outweigh all the portraits ever limned or modelled.
Browere left a wife and eight children, his second child and eldest son,
Alburtis D. O. Browere, inheriting the artistic temperament of the
father. He was born at Tarrytown, March 17, 1814, and died at Catskill,
February 17, 1887. After his father’s death, he entered the schools of
the National Academy of Design, and, in 1841, gained the first prize of
$100, in competition with twenty-four others, for his picture of
“Canonicus Treating with the English,” as detailed in Thatcher’s “Lives
of the Indians.” Previous to this, when only eighteen years old, he was
awarded a silver medal, by the American Institute in New York, “for the
best original oil painting,” the title of which has been forgotten. He
painted several pictures with Rip Van Winkle as the subject, and among
his contemporaries and friends was highly appreciated as an artist and
as a man. He went to California soon after the opening to the east of
that El Dorado, where he remained several years, painting many pictures
of mining scenes. It was he who added the draperies to the busts made
from his father’s life masks--an addition much to be regretted; but, on
the other hand, it was his filial reverence that preserved these
invaluable human documents, and has permitted us to see and know how
many of the great characters who have gone before really appeared in the
flesh, how they actually looked when they lived and moved and had their
being.
[Illustration]
IV
_The Captors of André_
“While Arnold is handed down with execration to future times, posterity
will repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and
Williams.” These words of Alexander Hamilton, written to John Laurens
shortly after the taking of André, form a fitting text for the chapter
introducing Browere’s busts of those patriots. It is fitting, because of
the varying winds that have blown over the subject, swaying public
opinion first one way and then the other; until finally the full
prophecy of Hamilton is accepted as the right judgment of posterity. Of
course, my comments refer only to the captors of André; there never has
been but one judgment as to the execrated Arnold.
It required more than a generation for any voice to let itself be heard
questioning the sincerity and patriotism of the three
[Illustration: JOHN PAULDING Age 59]
lads who brought André to justice. And then it was the voice of only one
man, Colonel Tallmadge, who had come under André’s winsome fascinations,
while acting as officer of the guard over the unfortunate spy from his
capture to his execution. The occasion for the unworthy onslaught of
Tallmadge, was a resolution offered in the House of Representatives, at
Washington, to increase the beggarly pension of $200 per annum, awarded,
with a silver medal, by the Continental Congress, to each of the
three,--Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart. Tallmadge opposed it, not upon
the ground that these men had not done the deed history accords to them
and thereby possibly saved the new nation, but because André, the
captured spy, while in captivity, had told his keeper that they deceived
him into believing they were British soldiers, and when he found they
were not, but were American militiamen and he their prisoner, he could
have bought his freedom if he had been weighted down with gold. Suppose
this story of André, as retailed by Tallmadge, thirty-seven years after
the happening of the event, is accepted at its fullest value--what does
it signify? At best it is a mere surmise, hardly even the expression of
an opinion; and that it was baseless is shown most emphatically by the
express denial of each one of the captors, under oath, when Tallmadge
made his ill-judged and unpatriotic charge. British gold was ever
present during the Revolution to debauch patriots and make them
traitors, acting upon the doctrine of Sir Robert Walpole, that every
man has his price; therefore André surmised that three ragged, unpaid,
militiamen would easily have yielded could they have seen the yellow
glitter; but subsequent events clearly disprove that the prisoner could
have bought his freedom.
The fact is, such a halo of romance and supposed chivalry has garlanded
itself over André, owing to his youth and charming personality, that the
best judgments are warped and influenced, in his favor, when they take
up a consideration of his unhappy fate. Yet his case was an aggravated
one. He entered upon the errand of a spy with his eyes wide open to its
dangers and its consequences. He was taken red-handed, and suffered the
penalty of his daring, after a trial, not by his peers, but by his
superiors. His suppliant plea that he was unwittingly betrayed within
our lines by the very man with whom he knew he was holding unlawful
communication, and that he should be protected by the word and passes of
the traitor Arnold, are pathetic in their puerility; yet his cause has
not failed of advocates upon this plea. After all, it is merely the
settling of a sentimental point in history, and the consensus of opinion
is that André suffered justly and that posterity should “repeat with
reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Williams.”
The truth is, there is too much unnecessary iconoclasm abroad in regard
to historic characters. Where false reputations have been built upon
foundations laid by others, or impinge upon the honor due to another, it
is meet and right that they should be exposed and honor be given to whom
honor is due. But there is no such condition here; it is a mere attempt
to tarnish one of the most important acts of the American Revolution in
its far-reaching consequences, so that it shall be deprived of some of
its brilliancy. On the present question we can do no better than accept
the judgment of Washington--a man never carried away by his feelings,
but always calm, judicial, and just. He wrote to Congress: “I do not
know the party that took Major André, but it is said that it consisted
only of a few militia, who acted in such a manner upon the occasion as
does them the highest honor and _proves them to be men of great virtue_.
As soon as I know their names I shall take pleasure in transmitting them
to Congress.” And later, in forwarding the proceedings of the Board of
War, to Congress, he writes: “I have now the pleasure to communicate the
names of the three persons who captured Major André and _who refused to
release him notwithstanding the most earnest importunities and
assurances of a liberal reward on his part_. Their names are John
Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart.”
The master spirit of the three captors seems to have been John Paulding,
who was the first of them to die, as also the first to have his mask
taken by Browere. Indeed, his bust is from the earliest mask we have
that Browere made, and is inscribed by the sculptor: “Made 1821 from the
mould made in 1817.” The latter was the year of the Tallmadge episode,
and Paulding, when in New York in connection with that affair, was
taken, by Alderman Percy Van Wyck, to Browere’s house at No. 315
Broadway, where the life mask was made.
The attempt has also been made to throw discredit upon the service of
the captors of André by underestimating their social position in the
community in which they lived. This absurd but too common practice in a
democracy like ours, where all men are supposed to be equal, can cut no
figure here; for whatever may have been the station in life of Williams
and Van Wart, who were kinsmen (the latter’s mother and the former’s
father having been brother and sister), Paulding belonged to a family of
consideration in his native State.
John Paulding was born in New York city in 1758, and died in Staatsburg,
Dutchess county, New York, February 18, 1818. His brother, William
Paulding, represented Suffolk county in the first provincial congress
that met in New York city, May 23, 1775; was a member of the New York
Committee of Safety, and commissary-general of the State troops. He,
himself, served throughout the war of the Revolution, and was three
times taken prisoner by the British, having escaped from his second
capture only a few days before the adventure with André. His unswerving
patriotism is therefore
[Illustration: ISAAC VAN WART
Age 66]
established by his personal service. Paulding was the one who actually
made the arrest by seizing the bridle of André’s horse, and he was the
leader and spokesman on the occasion. Nearly a decade after his death,
the corporation of the city of New York caused a monument to be erected
over his grave, at Peekskill, when his nephew, William Paulding, then
Mayor of New York, made the dedicatory address. Rear-Admiral Hiram
Paulding--who, at the time of his death, October 20, 1878, was senior
officer in the United States navy--was his son, and Commander Leonard
Paulding, who commanded the _St. Louis_, the first ironclad vessel in
the United States navy, in the war of the rebellion, was his grandson;
while James Kirke Paulding, the collaborateur of Washington Irving, in
the Salmagundi papers, and Secretary of the Navy under President Van
Buren, was his nephew. Surely this brief family history is sufficient to
set at rest any ridiculous squabbling as to his respectability and
position in the community. He very possibly wore the stigma of poverty,
in which case his refusal to release André, “notwithstanding the most
earnest importunities _and assurances of a liberal reward_,” only
emphasizes him to have been, in the words of Washington, a man of “great
virtue.”
Isaac Van Wart, who next followed Paulding to the grave, died at Mount
Pleasant, New York, on May 23, 1828, having been born, in Greenburg,
sixty-eight years before. He was the youngest of the three captors. Van
Wart was a West Chester farmer, and a staunch adherent to the cause of
his country; and there is no more reason to throw doubt upon the purity
of his motives in the great affair of his life than upon the motives of
Paulding, which are beyond questioning. His social position also seems
to be established by the fact, that he was a brother of Abraham Van
Wart, Adjutant in the Continental line, whose son Henry married the
youngest sister of Washington Irving. Van Wart’s mask was made by
Browere at Tarrytown in 1826, and until its discovery by the writer
there was no likeness of him known to be in existence.