A collection of Federal American vernacular portraits demonstrates the intimate allure of the genre.
What motivates a person to spend a life-time forming a collection that overfills every wall of their home? For this collector from New England, it has been the allure of the portraits painted in the early years of the United States, between 1790 and the 1850s. Americans at this time had a choice between two distinct portrait styles. In the larger coastal cities, the English academic painting style continued to be popular. These were ceremonial portraits that emphasized perspective and realism with a grandeur affordable
only to society’s elite.
Our collector has focused on the other major portrait style, which had a very different role in American society. At this time, around 90 percent of the new nation’s population lived in rural locations distant from the major cities. These Americans previously had no accessible or affordable way to obtain a portrait of themselves or their loved ones. After the Revolutionary War, new ways of expression and thinking emerged including the unprecedented concept that average citizens could be the patrons for artists. A uniquely American style of portraiture came to be, with the creation of lively new pictorial representations, establishment of art as an occupation, and changes in the sitter’s expectations from formal portraiture.
Soon, hundreds of portrait artists traveled to every city and town to meet a receptive public. Romantic philosophy was also a major influence, extolling the power of the artist’s mind in the creation of a portrait. As these were likenesses of loved ones, sentimentality and emotional content were emphasized.
A portrait was viewed not only for its representational success, but also for its empathic qualities. The sitter’s eyes stared at the viewer, engaging an emotional interaction. No preliminary drawings were made, so portraits represented the artist’s direct impression of the sitter. Each artist developed a distinctive painting style as they translated these concepts into portraits. These portraits have been called “folk art,” which implies limited artistic training and representational success. This fails to acknowledge that these were professional artists and that their portraits reflected a changing American society. We prefer to call these paintings “Federal American vernacular portraits,” which describes their period (Federal) and acceptance (vernacular). Clearly, these new portraits were some of the most original and popular paintings of their time and were produced in quantities such that they are relatively common two hundred years later. Federal American vernacular portraits are a unique category in American art history.
Artists faced two major challenges. Few commercially prepared art materials were available, so each artist had to learn to prepare almost all of their supplies, including primed canvas, paints, and brushes. To make paint, pigments for each color had to be processed from a variety of sources using extractions, chemical reactions, mixing, and distillations. This consumed much of an artist’s time, particularly since some paints required daily preparation. In addition, an artist had to learn composition, coloration, and the aesthetics of painting.
Portrait painting at this time required an expert level of technical knowledge and practice. As artists served a rural population, they had to be itinerants traveling with their possessions and cumbersome art supplies. Arriving in a new town, a prominent exhibition space was rented and interest generated by inviting the populace to examine completed portraits and watch the artist at work. The artist would be acclaimed as an alchemist, transforming paint and a blank canvas into a life-sized image of a neighbor.
A lively dialogue about the portrait’s success occurred with the artist, sitter, and the public. The portraits show an innovative use of light and color. A single direct light from the outside world illuminates the portrait with faces fully lit without shadows. Colors are often bold and animated with adjacent colors rarely mixed to produce harmonious transitions. Artists had to rely on their own impression of color and its effects.
Although Isaac Newton had written in 1704 that a prism could separate light into its component colors, this was dismissed by many as a parlor trick. Prominent color theories, such as those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in Germany in 1810, suggested that color was formed from a mixture of black and white and represented different brightnesses of light. It was thought that blue was darkness at its strongest, red when black and white were balanced, and yellow when light was strongest. It was not until later in the nineteenth century that the relationship between light and color was properly studied.
This collection of Federal American vernacular portraits illustrates the aesthetic power of this important genre of American art. Two portraits, George Colby and Abby Cole, are signed on the reverse by the elusive H. K. Goodman. Over a dozen portraits by Goodman have been located and, with several sitters identified, it is known that the artist painted in Vermont and New Hampshire during the 1840s. Despite extensive research, the authors have not been able to find any trace of the artist in historical records.
The portrait of George Colby shows a forceful frontal body with an elongated face and blue eyes. He is ready to do business with the viewer. In a fictive architectural space, the image is an impression of both the sitter and his surroundings. There is little regard for perspective with the red table oddly angled and unexpectedly the same color as the curtains. Hard edge lines and contours have been used to construct the simplified, intense image. The viewer’s attention is captured by the bright curtain with yellow fringe that frames the sitter and introduces a curious note of theatricality, while the lighting coming from the outside world oddly creates the contrasting black hues on his clothing.
Abby Cole’s compelling image is lightly detailed, while the artist seems more intent on fully describing the sofa. With a red wood rail, exuberantly painted top and side panels, and a black and brown colored fabric in a flower pattern on the back, this sofa is a whimsical invention, as it is unlike any furniture found in America at this time. The flowers in a vase next to her are also unnatural and difficult to understand. Rather than show the reality of the scene, Goodman’s imaginative use of unfamiliar objects, simplicity resulting in visual intensity, and distorted perspective create vibrant images that the viewer must slowly parse.
Man in Buttoned Jacket, attributed to Frederick Mayhew, focuses on the connection between the sitter and the viewer. While the background is without reference to a place, the sitter engages the viewer. The portrait exemplifies Mayhew’s compositional style that uses a stark flat linearity without lighting effects. Each component of the body is painted as a separate shape with economy and in equal clarity. The fanciful gold buttons draw the viewer to the sitter’s blue eyes, which stare at the observer. Friends and family would have responded to this intimate image and remembered, perhaps with a laugh, his fluffy unkempt hair and uncomfortable looking neck cravat. He appears content and self-satisfied.
The solemnity of the English academic style portrait has been replaced by the personal and direct interaction between the sitter and viewer. Mrs. Almariah Arnold, dated January 25, 1848, is attributed to J.A. Davis of Rhode Island. Although hundreds of portraits, which the artist often signed and dated, are known today, it has been a challenge to identify the painter. In 1841 Edward Davis, a prominent banker, married Jane Anthony (1821–1855), who quickly became the mother of three children. The portraits have been attributed to this married Jane Anthony Davis largely based on the difficulty of finding someone in Rhode Island with the initials J. A. and last name Davis.
However, she is unlikely to be the artist as the authors have seen eleven portraits signed J. A. Davis but dated from before her marriage. Also, she was never described as an artist. We believe the more likely candidate is Joshua A. Davis (1796–1857), a peripatetic penmanship instructor and schoolteacher, born in the same small town of Warwick, Rhode Island as Jane Anthony Davis. He is listed as a portrait painter in the Providence, Rhode Island directories toward the end of his life. However, a signed J. A. Davis portrait that includes the first name of the artist has not been seen, so this remains an open question.
Mrs. Arnold is depicted in a three-quarter view, with an elongated hourglass torso, face in pencil, blue eyes, and a distinctive negative space created by her body and arms.
Colorful additions include the scarf, brooch, yellow-painted chair, and book. A yellow border surrounds the portrait and the lower panel displays the sitter’s name and date in the expert calligraphic penmanship seen in many examples. The portrait is a captured snapshot, with rhythm and animation creating a warm familiarity. When a portrait is by an anonymous artist, the name of a well-known sitter is sometimes used to describe the painter. Unknown Woman is attributed to the Wilkerson Limner, as it is clearly by the same artist as the portrait of Mrs. Seth Wilkerson in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg. The sitter’s image floats on a monochromatic background. The elegant lace of her collar and bonnet with pink ribbon has been meticulously painted, while the black dress fades into the background. Her steadfast no-nonsense character and forceful assertion demand respect and interaction with the viewer. Wherever this portrait is placed, she is also in the room.
The elaborately painted chair apparently advertises the artist’s ability as an ornamental furniture painter. A clue about this artist’s identity came from notes attached to a pair of portraits describing that they were painted by an inmate of the State Prison in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Several of the known sitters were prison employees during the 1820s, suggesting that the artist was one of the prisoners. A signed portrait has not been located. Many of the collection’s portraits are of children and young adults, such as Charles Whittemore signed by Thomas Wilder and dated 1842. The boy displays Wilder’s typical slightly turned stance, waist-high view, large ears, and plain background. It is an uncomplicated and direct image composed of equally delineated shapes that fit together rather poorly. The face is casually modeled. The black jacket and vest blend together, while the awkward perspective of the boy’s hand seems incongruent with his body. The image’s asymmetry is dynamic and interesting and keeps the viewer’s eye moving between the boy’s hand and face. The stark simplicity as well as the overall stiffness of the portrait entice the viewer’s imagination.
Another pair of outstanding portraits are Mr. and Mrs. C. Olmstead, dated 1833, attributed to Sheldon Peck. An abolitionist, Peck was an important figure in the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom in Canada. More than one hundred portraits have been attributed to Peck based on his distinctive style. The images of the Olmsteads confront the viewer and are forcefully presented. The man’s body is a flat plane that draws attention to the head, while his sculptured face radiates strength with its sharpened angles and resolute expression.
When Peck lived in New York from 1828 to 1836, his color palette became brighter, particularly in his portraits of women. Mrs. Olmstead is truly resplendent in her latest fashion leg-of-mutton-sleeved dress.Its glaring color announces her prominence, even with the somewhat unconvincing folds, while her accoutrements attest to her family’s financial success. These portraits dominated the family home with their strong presence, particularly as they appear ready to interrogate the viewer.
The invention of photography in 1839 slowly closed the era of Federal American vernacular portraits. Photographs became the preferred method of record, ending the need for itinerant artists. To earn a livelihood, painters turned to large, sentimental portraits of children that could not be produced photographically.
Today, we see Federal American vernacular portraits in relationship to modern art. The attraction of simplicity and directness and the reduction to the essential elements of composition and color are enjoyed.
We appreciate the portraits’ spontaneity and elements of abstraction. This is the allure that both the original sitter and viewer felt and is still admired today. It is the criteria for the collector’s choices.
SUZANNE RUDNICK PAYNE, MICHAEL R. PAYNE, and FRANK TOSTO are collectors and scholars. This is the twenty fourth article the Paynes have written about early American folk art. It is dedicated to the memory of R. David Sudarsky, MD (1925–2014).
