some portraits from south carolina

Some Portraits from South CarolinaAuthor(s): Harry B. WehleSource: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 8 (Aug., 1931), pp. 188-193Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3256337 .

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BULLETIN OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

SOME PORTRAITS FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

Five early American portraits which have been purchased by the Museum during the past two or three years are now placed on exhibition for the first time.' Although bought separately, all five come from Charleston, South Carolina. Four were painted there and the fifth must have found its way there well over a century ago. The artists represented are Jeremiah Thetis, Joseph Badger, Henry Benbridge, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Of these the first three have not until now been represented in the Museum's collection.

Descriptions of the portraits with brief accounts of their authors follow in the chronological order of their painting.

I757. JEREMIAH THEUS-Portraits of Gabriel Manigault and Anne Ashby Mani- gault, his wife (fig. i). In a paper on Art and Artists in Provincial South Carolina the Reverend Robert Wilson2 gave the first extended account of this artist, and little has since been added to our knowledge.3 Jeremiah Thetis, so we are informed, emi- grated with two brothers from Switzerland to Charleston, South Carolina, not long before 1740. They were probably members of the Swiss and German colony that settled Orangeburg County. The eldest brother, Simeon, established himself as a merchant and planter; the youngest, Christianus, became pastor of the Swiss and German con- gregation on the Congaree River. The following announcement in the South Carolina Gazette for August 30, 1740, accounts for the third brother: "Jeremiah Thetis, Lim- ner, gives notice that he is removed into Market Square, near Mr. John Laurens, Sadler, where all Gentlemen and Ladies may have their pictures drawn, likewise Landscapes of all sizes, Crests and Coats of Arms for Coaches or Chaises. Likewise for the convenience of those who live in the

1 In the Room of Recent Accessions. 2 Year Book, City of Charleston, S. C., I899,

pp. 137-147. 3 John Hill Morgan (Brooklyn Museum Quar- terly, 1924, vol. XI, pp. 47-54), using material in the Frick Art Reference Library, increases Wil- son's list of known portraits by Thetis from 59 to 94.

country he is willing to wait on them at their respective Plantations."

A year and a half after the appearance of his announcement Thetis was married. Probably his work was well patronized from the start, and until Benbridge came to Charleston in 1773, Thetis had practically all the portrait trade of this thriving city. When he died in 1774 he left behind him many respected children and a handsome fortune.

Dunlap in 1834 quotes Charles Fraser, the miniature painter, as writing of Thetis, "I own one of his pictures, which indepen- dently of its claims as a family portrait of 1750, I value for its excellence." Thetis's excellences as a painter were of a distinctly Continental sort. Although it exhibits far more modest merits, his work should be compared with that of such painters in Germany as Georg Demarees and Johann Kupetzky. He gives his sitters alert dignity but somewhat standardized personality. His poses, as our portraits show, are simple in the extreme, and he shirks the painting of hands whenever he can do so. His color is always pleasantly cool and transparent, and he is at his best in painting satins and laces.

For the portraits of the Manigaults4 he had important sitters. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in i685, Pierre Mani- gault, aged twenty-four, left his home at La Rochelle and went to London en route for America, where in I729 he died in Charleston. His son Gabriel (1704-178i), the subject of our portrait, inherited most of the father's distilleries, cooperage plants, and slaves. Gabriel continued his father's activities, combining with them the labors of merchant, factor, trader, manufacturer, and planter5 and also figured in the cultural and political development of South Caro- lina. Although he advanced a loan of $220,000 to the Commonwealth at the time of the Revolution and recovered little of it, his estate at the time of his death included large sums of money, 47,532 acres of land, and 490 slaves. The manuscript diary of his

4 Both oil on canvas; h. 30, w. 2434 in. Both signed: Thetis 1757. 5 See Arthur Henry Hirsch, The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina. Durham (N. C.), 1928.

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wife, Anne Ashby (1705-1782), the subject of our second portrait, is said to reveal her as a connoisseur of the arts who entertained in her home important people of two conti- nents.

1760. JOSEPH BADGER-Portrait of James Badger (fig. 2). A still less skillful painter than Thetis was Joseph Badger, whose per-

fruits, birds, flowers, or pet animals. His color is confined almost entirely to slaty and olive tones, the flesh being delicately painted with bluish shadows close in value to the adjacent background. Park lists eighty portraits as being by him.

Badger was born in Charlestown, Massa- chusetts, in 1708. In 1731 he was married

FIG. I. MRS. GABRIEL MANIGAULT, BY JEREMIAH THEUS

sonality and style were brought to notice some years ago by Lawrence Park.6 Badger must be accounted among those whose chief charm lies in their naive and shy limita- tions. His poses are oddly stiff, but he reveals a touchingly serious respect for the characters of his subjects, however young. He delights to paint hands but paints them in curious wooden postures, often holding

6 Joseph Badger in Proceedings of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society, December, 1917 (Reprinted by the University Press. Boston, 1918); and Joseph Badger of Boston and His Portraits of Children in Old-Time New England, vol. XIII, pp. 99-109.

and moved to Cambridge. Two years later he had apparently moved to Boston, for between 1733 and I745 four of his children were baptized in the Brattle Square Church. His professional career was spent entirely in Boston, where he was listed as a painter and glazier. There is a record of his painting a house in Dedham in 1737; he probably painted signs and hatchments also. Twenty years after the Dedham job he received ?6 apiece for painting portraits of Timothy Orne and Mrs. Orne. When he died in 1765 his estate was found to be insolvent. The document appointing his widow as admin-

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istratrix refers to both him and his son Joseph, junior, as glaziers. Thus his life, of which we know only a few bare facts, must have been far from brilliant, despite the circumstance that some of his sitters were people of substance. His competitors in his earlier days as portraitist were Smibert and Greenwood, who were none too brilliant

birthday was indicated by an old inscription on the back of the canvas8: "July 8th 1760." The child was born July 31, 1757. The Mu- seum bought the portrait from a South Carolinian descendant of the artist and the subject, who supplied the following biog- raphical epitaph, copied from James's tombstone in the Unitarian Churchyard,

FIG. 2. JAMES BADGER, BY JOSEPH BADGER

themselves. From 1752 to 1754 Badger probably had no rivals, but in the latter year came Blackburn, and finally Copley, developing his full style, swept the field.

We have noted that four of Badger's children were recorded in the Brattle Square Church register. One of these was Joseph Badger, Jr., baptized November 14, 1736, who later followed his father's trade of glazier. A son of Joseph Badger, Jr., named James, is the subject of the Museum's quaint portrait.7 That Badger painted his little grandson shortly before his third

7 Oil on canvas; h. 42, w. 33 in.

Archdale Street, Charleston: "Erected in memory of James Badger, Sen'r. a native of Boston, N. E. who departed this Life Sept. 15th, A. D. I817 Aged 6o0 yrs. I mo. & I 5 days. At the age of 20 MV1r. Badger emi- grated to this City. In the year I788 he was chosen clerk of the Archdale Independent Church and for 30 years ably and faithfully discharged the duties of that office. As a member of this community he was useful, as a husband tender, as a Father affection- ate, as a master indulgent, as a friend sin- cere. As a Teacher of Sacred Music he inde-

8 Since relined.

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fatigably labored to promote that useful sci- ence. For many years he was a member in communion with this Church and was ex- emplary in his piety."

About 1780. HENRY BENBRIDGE -Por- trait of Mrs. Simons, nee Dupre (fig. 3). With Benbridge we reach a painter of con- siderably higher capabilities. Dunlap has a

article, still shows decidedly Wollaston- like errors in the drawing of the heads and hands. These soon gave place to a more accomplished Italianate style, for when Benbridge came of age his parents were able to send him to Rome to continue his studies under Pompeo Batoni and Anton Rafael Mengs. These were the teachers

FIG. 3. MRS. SIMONS, BY HENRY BENBRIDGE

good deal to say about him, and this information was corrected and supplemented in 1918 by W. Roberts and Charles Henry Hart.9 Henry Benbridge was born in Phila- delphia in I744. When he was seven his widowed mother married Thomas Gordon, a wealthy widower. Wollaston, who painted a portrait of Gordon, may have been Ben- bridge's first teacher. Benbridge's portrait of the Gordon family, reproduced in Hart's

9 An Early American Artist: Henry Bern- bridge, in Art in America, vol. VI, pp. 96-o101, and The Gordon Family: Painted by Henry Benbridge, ibid., pp. 191-200, respectively.

under whom Benjamin West had worked a few years before.

In I768 James Boswell, the biographer, commissioned Benbridge to go to Corsica to paint a portrait of Pasquale Paoli. The mezzotint after this portrait shows a sturdy, full-length figure in a rocky landscape. It reveals no traces of provincialism. The next year Thomas Gordon wrote to Benjamin Franklin, who was in London, begging that his "son-in-law Henry Benbridge" be recommended "to such acquaintances as may employ him," and adding that the young man had been studying for several years in

I9i




Italy. In 1770 the Royal Academy exhibition included two portraits by Benbridge which have been identified as lost portraits of Dr. Franklin and the Reverend Thomas Coombs. The same year saw Benbridge back in Philadelphia, but soon he moved to Charleston with the expectation, according to Dunlap, that the change would benefit

Not many of the paintings which Ben- bridge must have made in Charleston during the most active twenty-six or twenty- seven years of his life have been identified. A splendid group portrait in a private collection in New York, formerly attributed to Copley," shows four full-length figures of women and children. This is a portrait of

FIG. 4. MRS. DANIEL DE SAUSSURE BACOT, BY

SAMUEL F. B. MORSE

his asthma. Dr. John Morgan, in a letter dated November 24, 1773, writes, "In a visit I lately made to Charles Town, South Carolina, I saw Mr. Benbridge who is settled very advantageously there and prose- cutes his Profession with Reputation and success."'0 Benbridge remained at work in Charleston until the end of the century. The last years of his life were spent in Nor- folk, Virginia, where he gave Sully elemen- tary instruction in the use of oil paints, and in Philadelphia, where he died in 1812.

10 Copley-Pelham Letters, Boston, 1914, p. 208.

old Mrs. Thomas Hartley and members of her family and may well be the one referred to in a letter from Benbridge.12 If so it was painted in 1787.

Benbridge's portrait of Mrs. Simons,13 which the Museum has bought, was lent for many years by Mrs. J. V. H. Bowley (to whom it had descended from the sitter) to the South Carolina Art Association, where it was catalogued as by "Benrige, an Eng-

n Shown in the Hudson-Fulton Exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1907, no. 7.

12 See Hart, ibid., p. I99. 13 Oil on canvas; h. 30, w. 25 in.

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BULLETIN OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART BULLETIN OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

lish artist." This portrait reveals the same strong characterization, fine drawing, heavy shadows, skillful handling of stuffs, and pe- culiar brownish tonality which may be noted in the Hartley group portrait. Ben- bridge painted miniatures also, and two beautiful examples attributed to him are owned by the Museum.

1818-1821. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE-Por- trait of Mrs. Daniel de Saussure Bacot (fig. 4).14 Morse's name and something of his history are known to most Americans be- cause of his invention of the telegraph, but his fame as a painter is also widespread. The Museum has owned since I909 his fine, solid portrait of De Witt Clinton. The newly ac- quired portrait of Mrs. Bacot is a brilliant illustration of the more exquisite side of his portraiture.

Those who are acquainted with the main facts of Morse's life will recall that, after his four years in Europe under the tutelage of Washington Allston and Benjamin West, he returned unwillingly to America with his heart full of noble artistic aspirations. In his own country he found to his dismay that nobody was interested in historical compo- sitions. He was driven to portrait work but soon learned that this field, too, could be worthy of his best effort. Before long he was in love, engaged to marry, and then married. It was essential that he have portraits to do to earn a decent income. He turned to Charleston, the rich and hospitable city which had already welcomed the talents of Copley (vide the expensive double portrait of the Izards painted in Rome), Malbone, Benbridge, Thetis, Jarvis, Waldo, and at least three of the Peales. Here for four suc- cessive winters, I818 to I821, Morse found employment. Which winter it was that Mrs. Bacot sat to him we do not know. Thus far we know very little also about Mrs. Bacot herself. The portrait shows her to have been a particularly lovely woman. Her grace and her rich color have been reproduced for us by Morse with a delicacy and vivacity worthy of Gilbert Stuart at his best. Mrs. Bacot's maiden name was Eliza McK. (or Milner?) Ferguson. She was the second daughter of William Cattell Fergu- son and Elizabeth Milner Colcock, who


lish artist." This portrait reveals the same strong characterization, fine drawing, heavy shadows, skillful handling of stuffs, and pe- culiar brownish tonality which may be noted in the Hartley group portrait. Ben- bridge painted miniatures also, and two beautiful examples attributed to him are owned by the Museum.

1818-1821. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE-Por- trait of Mrs. Daniel de Saussure Bacot (fig. 4).14 Morse's name and something of his history are known to most Americans be- cause of his invention of the telegraph, but his fame as a painter is also widespread. The Museum has owned since I909 his fine, solid portrait of De Witt Clinton. The newly ac- quired portrait of Mrs. Bacot is a brilliant illustration of the more exquisite side of his portraiture.

Those who are acquainted with the main facts of Morse's life will recall that, after his four years in Europe under the tutelage of Washington Allston and Benjamin West, he returned unwillingly to America with his heart full of noble artistic aspirations. In his own country he found to his dismay that nobody was interested in historical compo- sitions. He was driven to portrait work but soon learned that this field, too, could be worthy of his best effort. Before long he was in love, engaged to marry, and then married. It was essential that he have portraits to do to earn a decent income. He turned to Charleston, the rich and hospitable city which had already welcomed the talents of Copley (vide the expensive double portrait of the Izards painted in Rome), Malbone, Benbridge, Thetis, Jarvis, Waldo, and at least three of the Peales. Here for four suc- cessive winters, I818 to I821, Morse found employment. Which winter it was that Mrs. Bacot sat to him we do not know. Thus far we know very little also about Mrs. Bacot herself. The portrait shows her to have been a particularly lovely woman. Her grace and her rich color have been reproduced for us by Morse with a delicacy and vivacity worthy of Gilbert Stuart at his best. Mrs. Bacot's maiden name was Eliza McK. (or Milner?) Ferguson. She was the second daughter of William Cattell Fergu- son and Elizabeth Milner Colcock, who


were married in Charleston, on November 6, 1792, and now lie side by side in the burial ground of Saint Michael's Church. The portrait descended to us through the Bacot and Fripp families. HARRY B. WEHLE.

SASANIAN WALL DECORATION IN STUCCO

In 33I B.C. Alexander the Great con- quered Persia and destroyed the great empire of the Achaemenids. As a result of this conquest Greek civilization invaded Iran, and Hellenistic art dominated the Near East for several centuries. Under the rule of the Parthian Arsacids (175 B.C.- A.D. 226) a hybrid art, in which both Hel- lenistic and Oriental forms are plainly distinguishable, sprang up in Iran. Greek goddesses and Greek inscriptions appear on Arsacidian coins and monuments. Only in Persis, the southern province of Iran, where the tradition of national culture was strongest, do we find a special coinage with legends in Pahlavi, a Persian language writ- ten with Aramaic characters. In Persis originated the new Persian dynasty of the Sasanids (A.D. 212-65 i), which soon con- quered the whole of Iran and the western countries between the Euphrates and the Tigris. As under the Achaemenids, Persia again became a world power, rivaling Rome and endangering her Asiatic provinces. Hellenistic influences were gradually elimi- nated from public life. The survival of national consciousness led also to the creation of a new Persian style, known as Sasanian,l which, although based on the great traditions of Achaemenian art, de- veloped characteristics of its own, due to the impressions left by Hellenistic and Roman art. Both arts are decorative but there is one essential difference between them: in Achaemenian art the relief is always low: in Sasanian it is high, with an abundance of details and a baroque exag- geration of hair and draperies, as seen in various rock sculptures and silver plates.

A favorite material of wall decoration in the Sasanian period was stucco. Recent

1 F. Sarre, Die Kunst des alten Persien; E. Herzfeld, Am Tor von Asien.

were married in Charleston, on November 6, 1792, and now lie side by side in the burial ground of Saint Michael's Church. The portrait descended to us through the Bacot and Fripp families. HARRY B. WEHLE.

SASANIAN WALL DECORATION IN STUCCO

In 33I B.C. Alexander the Great con- quered Persia and destroyed the great empire of the Achaemenids. As a result of this conquest Greek civilization invaded Iran, and Hellenistic art dominated the Near East for several centuries. Under the rule of the Parthian Arsacids (175 B.C.- A.D. 226) a hybrid art, in which both Hel- lenistic and Oriental forms are plainly distinguishable, sprang up in Iran. Greek goddesses and Greek inscriptions appear on Arsacidian coins and monuments. Only in Persis, the southern province of Iran, where the tradition of national culture was strongest, do we find a special coinage with legends in Pahlavi, a Persian language writ- ten with Aramaic characters. In Persis originated the new Persian dynasty of the Sasanids (A.D. 212-65 i), which soon con- quered the whole of Iran and the western countries between the Euphrates and the Tigris. As under the Achaemenids, Persia again became a world power, rivaling Rome and endangering her Asiatic provinces. Hellenistic influences were gradually elimi- nated from public life. The survival of national consciousness led also to the creation of a new Persian style, known as Sasanian,l which, although based on the great traditions of Achaemenian art, de- veloped characteristics of its own, due to the impressions left by Hellenistic and Roman art. Both arts are decorative but there is one essential difference between them: in Achaemenian art the relief is always low: in Sasanian it is high, with an abundance of details and a baroque exag- geration of hair and draperies, as seen in various rock sculptures and silver plates.

A favorite material of wall decoration in the Sasanian period was stucco. Recent

1 F. Sarre, Die Kunst des alten Persien; E. Herzfeld, Am Tor von Asien.

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some portraits from south carolina

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