America’s First Fine Art: Realism Portraiture

Benjamin Tallmadge by Ezra Ames courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society

AMERICA’S FIRST ART: PORTRAITURE

In the 1600s, England had four main colonies in America, New England, New York (taken from the Dutch), Quaker Pennsylvania and the Virginia area. By the later years of the 1600s, there were already painters creating America’s first fine artwork. By the American Revolution, the major cities provided a large number of painters with work, most of it providing oil paintings for the wealthy. Some of these artists were well-trained students of English teachers; others were semi-taught or self-taught artists, working smaller towns or traveling from town to town. Almost all of them catered to an artistic genre that had financially blossomed in America: portraiture.

In the decades of colonial America, Europe went through a number of art styles and genres, all of it available to the wealthy European. But in America, art struggled slowly, not being able to grow until enough people were willing to indulge in supporting art. In particular, that meant paying for the services of a portrait artist to provide the proper glamour that a portrait could bring.

The first portrait artists appeared in the Boston area, They do not seem to have appeared until the latter part of the 1600s and may have been middle aged artists either fleeing the religious persecutions in England or, more probably, unable to find work in their mother country. Their styles seem to reflect the aging Elizabethan styles found in the paintings of the Tudors but, by that time, the Scottish Stuarts were in power and royalty like King James I preferred the more flamboyant styles of Dutch painter Van Dyck. So for some time, America painted in a style that Europe had already abandoned. It may have been a few of those out of style artists who appeared on our shores.

Decade by decade, America slowly caught up to England, as most of the colonists came from Great Britain as did most of our art supplies, moneys and art education. A number of artists were trained there, such as John Smibert, Gilbert Stuart and John Copley. By the time of the American Revolution,artists regularly traveled to London for training and the war really played havoc with their loyalties as many American artists found good work in England. Some returned to America, some never did. Those were also the years when Philadelphia was the gloried city in America and many artists either set up teaching or painted within the environs of Philadelphia. Those who could not succeed in Philadelphia, ended up wandering off to other partsof the eastern seaboard, such as rural Pennsylvania, Maryland or parts of the American South.

With the success of the Erie Canal in the late 1820s, New York City passed Philadelphia as America’s leading city and the artists started to appear in much greater numbers there. Artists like Henry Inman taught there and, eventually, an artists union was formed there.

Outside of the cities, there were innumerable artists of less success, living in small towns or wandering the countryside, offering their services as an artist. Many of them did other artistic work such as decorating houses or furniture, or painting advertising signs for local businesses. Some of these artists were influenced by older styles, some were highly original and a many only painted family and friends.

These days, people raised on modern art find this portraiture boring although a lot of history and artistic style can be discovered in them. Every museum seems to have a few and if you can look past our contemporary lives and into the lives of those who came before us, you can see into this world our forefathers were once proud of and discover something about America that is very different from how we now view ourselves.

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