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For more on the Worcester Art Museum, see the first post in this series. In this post we look American paintings of the early 19th century at the WAM, and see how they compare with the European ones that we’ve looked at.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/uoVmXdTNJLA.

Note: not included in this series are portraits in the Krashes Collection of Folk Art at the WAM. Included among folk artists are limners, untrained and itinerant portrait painters who painted middle-class Americans – people who couldn’t afford portraitists of the caliber of Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Lawrence. (See here and here.)

1804: Penniman

This may be a self-portrait by John Ritto Penniman (1782-1841), who was apprenticed at age 11 to a painter who specialized in ornamental decorations on furniture. By age 21, Penniman had his own shop in Boston producing decorative art. He painted an assortment of portraits, landscapes, and allegorical scenes. Penniman was also an assistant to Gilbert Stuart (see below), naming his only son after Stuart. More on Penniman here; more of his paintings here.

1808-1812: Vanderlyn

John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) also studied under Gilbert Stuart (see below). He became a protégé of Aaron Burr, who paid for him to travel to Paris in 1796, making Vanderlyn the first American to travel to Paris (rather than England) for training. There he became the first American to win a medal at the French Salon. The sitter in this portrait, Sampson Vryling Stoddard Wilder, a Massachusetts native, sat for Vanderlyn during a visit to Paris.

Back in the United States, Vanderlyn painted portraits of Vice President Burr and Burr’s daughter Theodosia (1802), and later of James Monroe, James Madison, and New York Governor George Clinton. Vanderlyn tried but failed to make a living by displaying panoramic paintings in a rotunda in New York City: his panorama of Versailles (1818-1819) was on display there for 10 years. It’s now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It’s been suggested that the Gansevoort Limner, who painted the portrait above of Susanna Truax, was John’s father, Pieter Vanderlyn … although if Pieter was born ca. 1687 and John in 1775, Pieter must have been quite lively for an 88-year-old. In any case, Susanna Truax is a good example of the difference between self-taught limners and European-trained painters.

1810-1811 & 1822: Stuart & Stuart

Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), a native of Rhode Island, studied in London, where he absorbed the Grand Style of British portraiture, as shown in the works of Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Lawrence. (See this post and this one.) Back in the United States in the mid-1790s, Stuart immediately became popular for his charming manner and his ability to capture both physical appearance and character. The sitter on the left is Elizabeth Tuckerman Salisbury, whose grandson Stephen Salisbury III helped found the Worcester Art Museum. On the right is Stuart’s 1822 portrait of Russell Sturgis, a furrier from Boston who had Stuart paint his portrait no less than three times.

Stuart’s most famous work is his incomplete portrait of George Washington. He kept this incomplete version in his studio, and finished at least 60 versions of it.

1812: Sully

Thomas Sully (1783-1872) was born in England, but came to South Carolina with his actor parents in 1792. After studying with Gilbert Stuart in Boston and Benjamin West in London, Sully became a the most fashionable painter in Philadelphia, working in the style of Thomas Lawrence. (See this post.) Sully’s records show that he produced some 2,600 paintings beginning in 1801.

This painting, of Margaret Siddons (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing), shows the graceful curves characteristic of Sully’s portraits of women. Subjects of Sully’s other portraits include Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Queen Victoria. See more of his works here.

Next week: American portraits of mid-19th century.

More

• For the Resurrecting Romanticism conference in October 2023, I’m working on a talk on art at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the Columbian Exposition. One of the questions I’ll be addressing is why the organizers of the Exposition, and the painters whose works appeared there, were so very keen to surpass the buildings and exhibitions of the 1889 Paris world’s fair. To remind myself of the development of European and American painting over time, this series of posts is a quick overview of European portraits from the Renaissance to the 19th century, followed by American portraits. Eventually I’ll post on other paintings at the Worcester Art Museum.
• If the history of Western painting interests you, check out my Innovators in Painting: a 140-page survey focusing on innovations that gave painters more power to make their viewers stop, look, and think about paintings.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here. For examples of favorite recommendations from past years, click here.