An exhibition of exceptional interest is now at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. American Colonial Portraits: 1700-1776 gives reason for popular pride as well as scholarly reflection, for it documents the development of painting in colonial America with the subject matter most loved and demanded by the colonial patron--himself and his family.
When people establish a new territory or found a nation, one of their first priorities is to record their presence. They must certify that they are there, and that their children are there to succeed them. The enormous popularity of portraiture in colonial America--and in the following century--attests to this fundamental need.
As we celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, whose Preamble announced to the world that "We, the People, [wish] to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," we should ponder the portraits in this exhibition with special attention. Clergymen and politicians, Indians and actresses, merchants, planters, and artists all find their place in this large, carefully thought-out show.
Accompanied by a catalog that brings together much of the research published during the past decade and makes it readily accessible to a wider public, exhibition is large and varied. There are over a hundred objects, including some sixty-five oil portraits, fifteen watercolors and pastels, many mezzotints and other prints, drawings, and artists' notebooks. The lone piece of sculpture, whose inclusion in the exhibition is delightfully ironic, is a fragment of a bust of George III, whose colonies these were. The piece was mutilated in Montreal when rebellion flared there.
There are portraits in miniature and life-size; heads and full-length figures; individuals, families, and larger groups; both sexes, three races, and all ages. Some of the artists are famous, others anonymous. All the British colonies of North America in which portraits were painted are represented, from Canada to the Atlantic and Caribbean islands. This heterogeneity should not be mistaken for aimlessness. It is as accurate a reflection of the people of the colonies as can reasonably he achieved in an exhibition.
Of particular interest is the care taken to discover and point out the reason for the commission of a given portrait. There were wedding portraits and commemorative portraits, portraits to celebrate financial success or sociopolitical standing and portraits to send as gifts or keepsakes to friends or relatives abroad. Eventually, some families whose prosperity continued through several generations formed extensive collections of family portraits that, as in England, came to be valued equally as art collections and documents of lineage.
Few Trained Artists
At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were few trained artists in the colonies. There were artisans who would offer to make a likeness when not engaged in their main trades of sign, coach, or house painting. These men shared two characteristics, regardless of talent. They were concerned primarily with linear description rather than three-dimensional modeling of their subjects, and they tended toward literal representation instead of flattering idealization. Of course, they
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