King Derby's Plenty

On a recent visit to Salem I happened upon a stunning sculpture by an 18th-century carver, Simeon Skillen, Jr., who is also represented in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. He has always fascinated me because of the sheer sophistication of his work, most of which was done in the 1790s. There would have been no opportunities for formal training then, so Skillen must have learned his trade in his family's carving shop, which was widely known at the time. I think his sculptures of the human form are as good as anything being done in America. You can find more information on the family workshop in Boston's North End here.

The piece I saw in the galleries of the Peabody Essex Museum was a large, standing figure of Plenty, a nymph in Roman mythology but for this occasion dressed in an 18th-century gown and holding an overflowing cornucopia. It was carved in 1793 for Elias Hasket Derby of Salem (whose portrait by James Frothingham, also at PEM, is seen above), a very wealthy shipowner who made his money in international trade and privateering during the Revolutionary War. He is referred to as "King Derby" in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and is sometimes (erroneously) called "America's first millionaire."

The figure of Plenty reportedly stood in Derby's formal garden at his summer farm in Salem. The garden is famous for its summer house designed by Samuel McIntire, the architect and carver for whom one of Salem's Historic Districts is now named. McIntire designed a number of homes for Derby, but this summer house is one of his most elegant creations.

Which makes it interesting to me that the summer house is adorned with two life size sculptures by Simeon Skillen, a milkmaid and a reaper. It was in this illustrious company that the figure of Plenty found herself. By contrast, our sculpture by Skillen is more modest but still superb, a bust of the Apollo as god of the sun (note the sunrise on his chest).

Two notes of interest: Derby, despite deriving all of his wealth and influence from the maritime trade, never went to sea himself; and lastly, Hawthorne got his inspiration for The Scarlet Letter from a couple of years working as a customs officer at the Custom House in Salem where, hour after endless hour, he looked out over Derby Wharf.

The Challenge of a Rural Art Museum

As part of my annual media tour to promote the Fenimore Art Museum I happened to have an interview with an arts writer for the Huffington Post. As we got talking, the conversation morphed from the subject of our new exhibitions to our exhibition philosophy, which I have always felt was shaped primarily by our location in rural New York.

The writer became so intrigued by the notion of a rural art museum tailoring its philosophy to the challenges of attracting an audience from the surrounding countryside that she asked me to contribute a blog post on the topic. A couple of months later I finally completed the assignment, and the post appeared just this past Tuesday. Here is the link to the Huffington's Arts page with my post.

The response has been tremendous; much more than I imagined. I had heard of Huffington, but had no idea it had more than 31 million unique visitors every month. That would have made me a whole lot more nervous writing my post.

Anyway, if you read the post you will get some idea of what we are doing at the museum and why. You might even cut me some slack for not keeping up with this blog as much as I used to. One can always hope.

Portrait of a Future Wife

The William Matthew Prior portraits are coming in and we are laying them out in the gallery. This is one of my favorite parts of the job, seeing artwork come together and shaping multiple pieces into a coherent exhibition. The exhibition is shaping up nicely, but the most fascinating thing has been the inscriptions on the reverse of many of the canvases. I thought I would share a few of those with you.

Here is Prior's portrait of his future wife, Rosamond. He met her when he went from his hometown of Bath, Maine, to Portland to seek training in the painting trade. After arriving in town, he went to the best known house painter in the area, Avery Hamblin. As luck would have it, Avery had a daughter. Here she is. Prior painted her in 1824 and married her in 1828.

The inscription reads: "W. M. Prior, Painter, formerly of Bath, 1824, 3 piece on cloth, painted in C. Codman's shop, Portland, Maine." Codman was a marine painter that Prior trained with in his early years.

In making such a detailed inscription Prior was documenting himself in preparation for an artistic career. What we may never know is what personal thoughts he may have had in mind while painting Rosamond. He may have been showing off a bit for her by adding so much detail. It does seem that he made the right first stop when arriving in Portland, and certainly had a flair for impressing his patrons.

An Early American Portrait on Glass

Most early American folk portraitists worked in either oil on canvas or watercolor on paper. Very few mastered the art of reverse painting on glass. This was an art form that was hundreds of years old in Europe, but was actually brought to the United States in great numbers from China during the years of the China Trade from the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s. Reverse painting on glass wasn't even taught in America until the late 1780s, in Philadelphia. Somehow, our limner Benjamin Greenleaf of Hull, Massachusetts, learned the art form by the time he painted this reverse glass portrait of Lydia Waterman of Hingham, Massachusetts in 1810.

Reverse painting on glass has a luminous effect that is very enjoyable to behold. The brush strokes are so smooth against the surface and the play of light as it reflects on and through the glass brings out the color in ways that canvas or paper cannot. The really fascinating thing about this art form is that the artist had to do the painting in reverse, painting the highlights first and the base coats last; just the opposite of how most artists learn to paint.

Not much is know about Greenleaf. He was born in Hull in 1769, married in 1799, and died in 1821. He lived in Dorchester and painted portraits in Eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. There are a few dozen of his works known, most of which are on glass as this one is. I've always been partial to our portrait of the 74-year-old Lydia Waterman in her white bonnet with her matter-of-fact expression. That the artist was able to capture her personality so well in such a demanding medium makes this a real masterpiece, and the fact of its fragility makes it a remarkable survival as well.