The Mentor, No. 45, Makers of American Art

MAKERS OF AMERICAN ART

By J. THOMSON WILLING

WEST

COPLEY

STUART

THE MENTOR

Serial No. 45

Department of Fine Arts

MENTOR GRAVURES

LADY WENTWORTH
By John Singleton Copley—1737-1815

CHRIST REJECTED
By Benjamin West—1738-1820

GEORGE WASHINGTON
By Charles Willson Peale—1741-1827

ALEXANDER HAMILTON
By John Trumbull—1756-1843

DOLLY MADISON
By Gilbert Stuart—1755-1828

A SPANISH GIRL
By Washington Allston—1779-1843

Early art in America was distinctly commercial, in that it conformed to the law of demand and supply. In those prephotographic days records were desired of the appearance of people who were gradually coming into an easier mode of living than their ancestors, the hardy pioneers, had been able to acquire. The Colonial official, the landowner, the merchant, all wished to emulate in little the great folk of the Old World, and have family portraits. The craftsmen to supply the demand were few, and the quality of their art far from fine. The Colonial period was barren of good production. It is marvelous that in this pictorially uncultured time, without the stimulus of good examples to be seen and of fellow strivers to instruct, such wonderfully good workers in art should arise as Copley in Boston and West in Pennsylvania, and a little later Malbone in Newport, who in miniature work outclassed anyone then working. After study in Europe these men’s work was broader and better; but yet much of their early work indicates their caliber.

EARLY AMERICAN PORTRAITS

MR. and MRS. IZARD (Alice DeLancey)

By Copley, in Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

After the proclamation of peace the people were more prosperous and the portrait market was good. Not only family portraits were wanted, but portraits of political heroes. The commercial artist was there to take orders and deliver the goods. The goods he delivered were of a very high grade of workmanship. After the individual portrayal came the order for the historical picture, the celebration of the dramatic moment and the great event. Further than these two classes of pictures the earliest art did not go. The life of the day in all its human aspects of picturesqueness was ignored. The genre picture did not come until about the middle of the nineteenth century.