The exhibition  Colonial and Federal Portraits at Bowdoin College  was held at the gallery of Wildenstein and Company, New York City.https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/art-museum-exhibition-catalogs/1071/thumbnail.jp

Bowdoin College. Museum of Art

Flexner, James Thomas

English

Bowdoin College

A SPEECH GIVEN ONTHE OCCASION OF THE EXHIBITIONCOLONIAL & FEDERAL PORTRAITSBY JAMES THOMAS FLEXNERTheBowdoinCollegeLibraryPortrait of Brigadier General Samuel Waldo by Robert FekeON Display at the Wildenstein GalleryA SPEECHGiven on the Occasion of theEXHIBITIONColonial & Federal PortraitsBY JAMES THOMAS FLEXNERSeptember ij, ig66Wildenstein's, New York CityBOWDOIN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART1967Copyright 1967 by The President and Trustees of Bowdoin CollegePrinted by The Anthoensen Press, Portland, MaineINTRODUCTIONThe exhibition^ Colonial and Federal Fortraits at Bow-doin College at the gallery of Wildenstein and CompanyyNew York City^ in September of 1966 marked the first timein its 153 -year history that the collection was seen in its en-tirety outside of Brunswick^ Maine, An event of great sig-nificance for the College and for the history of Americanpaintings the importance of the exhibition was emphasized bythe publication of an exhaustive catalogue of the collection^written by Marvin S. Sadik and supported by a grant fromthe Ford Foundationy and by the inaugural speech of the deanof historians of American paintingy James Thomas Flexner,As a writer and lecturer on American arty Mr, Flexnerhardly needs an introduction. It should be addedy howeverthat his numerous books—from America's Old Masters,published in 1939, through American Painting: ThatWilder Image, published in 1 962—have established them-selves not only as history but also as literaturcy an enviable dis-tinction in this Age of the Specialist,We have thought it fitting to commemorate the exhibitionby the publication of Mr, Flexner^s speech. Although a year—and more—has since passedy his comments are as pertinentnow as then. They will remind those who attended of a de-lightful occasiony and they will give to those friends of Bow-doin and its collections who were unable to attend an opportu-nity to learn of Mr, Flexner^s insights. The speech celebrates[ 3 ]the quality and importance of Bowdoin^s heritage. In doingsOy it reaffirms Bowdoin'^s desire to meet the challenges ofmaintaining one of the leading small college museums in thenation,Richard V. WestCurator[ 4 ]wHEN I was invited to speak on this occa-sion, it seemed clear to me in very generalterms what ought to be said. The occa-sion beine the visit to my native city ofWW^'U/ra one of the very old American art col-lections, a collection that goes back to important eigh-teenth-century beginnings in American art, my themeshould obviously be Bowdoin's connection with the longspan of aesthetic creation in America. But how to makethe point was another matter.I am sure that you have all agreed to deliver speechesat one time or another, and thus you are familiar withthe psychological steps that follow. You write the datedown in your engagement book and observe with a cer-tain relief that your notation is pages and pages aheadof the part of the book in which you are writing yourcurrent engagements. The speech is clearly scheduledfor some future time that may never come. In any case,months lie ahead, so why worry?But the months pass, and one night you wake up un-happily from a dream in which you were back at collegeand suddenly faced with taking a final examination fora course you had forgotten you had enrolled in. After afew minutes of wakefulness the reference finally comesclear: That speech: it is now only a few weeks away.Panic!I am old enough in the verbal game to feel confident[ 5 ]that if you can only get started^ you can continue andfinish a speech—but how was I to get started? A Har-vard man, how was I to speak to Bowdoin graduatesabout treasures they have always cherished?My panic concerning this speech sailed in over thedarkened fields of West Cornwall, Connecticut, whereI spend the summers. We have learned in West Corn-wall to rely for everything on the general store, but Idid not expect Yutzler's Country Store to come to myrescue in this dilemma. However, it did by supplyingme with a copy of the New York Times,There was an article headed: "Art Chiefs StudyTheir Jobs Here; 38 Administrators Attend a CultureGame Seminar." The story explained that New YorkUniversity was holding a seminar for administrators ofcommunity art councils and centers, "one of the newestspecialties," as the paper pointed out, "in a specializedage." William R. Taylor, identified as Professor ofAmerican History at the University of Wisconsin, hadbeen imported to give the fledgling art administrators ahistorical background. "It was a gloomy view," theTimes reported. "He spoke of the way Americans havesustained hostility to the arts over a good part of theirhistory."Professor Taylor's gloomy view is refuted by this ex-hibition that we shall all visit as soon as I am happilysilent and this dinner is adjourned.That it does supply a refutation is to my mind one ofthe very important contributions of the Bowdoin Col-[ 6 ]lege Museum of Art. It is not one of the largest collec-tions in the United States, although in one major par-ticular—as I shall point out in a moment— it is incon-trovertibly the greatest. However, it is an importantcollection that goes far back in the history of Americanculture, back beyond the founding of Bowdoin Collegeitself, back before the American Revolution and thebirth of the United States. The collection has growncharmingly, naturally, and effectively with the growthof America to this moment, more than two centuriesafter a happy beginning in our culture which—as Ishall again point out— is exemplified in the collectionitself. And, gathering here tonight, we can feel confi-dent that the collection will continue to grow far intothe lifetime of our descendants, to be an inspiration tothem as it should be to us.I have quoted with some asperity the gloomy view ofProfessor Taylor that Americans have almost alwaysbeen hostile to art. The statement, although far fromcorrect, is of considerable cultural significance becauseit has so often been made, not only in the present daybut also down through the generations to the very be-ginnings of self-conscious American culture. The state-ment is usually accompanied by the contention that thisopposition to art has recently evaporated. To use theterm most commonly employed, American art has fi-nally "come of age." Every generation contends that ithas at long last seen American culture come of age.We hear the contention today. There has just been a[ 7 ]cultural explosion. For the first time, Americans havebecome concerned with culture; for the first time,American painters have reached a stature that makesthem admired abroad. It has been utterly forgotten thatat the time of the American Revolution we sent paintersto England who led in the evolution of European artand were admired across the European continent. Andalmost all the subsequent glories of American art arealmost unknown to our self-appointed aesthetes. Con-vinced that in their own generation our art is belatedlycoming of age despite a continuing American hostilityto art, the average cultured American refuses even tolook at what has been done before in his own world.This perpetual wail is in itself a demonstration ofAmerica's lack of hostility to art, of eagerness even if ittakes a frustrated form. Why it has taken this form isa matter too complicated for us to consider this eveningalthough I might point out that it is a strange phenom-enon. The inhabitants of most nations gain a sense ofself-satisfaction from boasting, often to an exaggeratedextent, of the cultural traditions they exemplify. Aes-thetically minded Americans, however, too often gettheir sense of satisfaction by insisting that they per-sonally are more cultured than their nation and theirneighbors; that they are, indeed, aesthetic missionariesbringing artistic light to a people up to that momentbenighted.This is a free country, and every man has a right toplay, without criticism, every harmless cultural game[ 8 ]he pleases. But this cultural game has not been harmless.It hasj indeed, done much to encourage such aestheticweaknesses as the attitude deplores.The tendency of every generation to start over again,as if there had never previously been any American art,has been to aesthetic creation on these shores a majorhandicap. We need only compare our cultural attitudesto those of the French to realize v^hat a great disservicewe are doing to ourselves. A Frenchman emerges fromthe cradle in the belief that he inhabits clime which isArcadia itself, the natural habitat of art. If he recallsa school of French painting not currently admired—like those overinflated nineteenth-century figure pieceswhich he derisively dismisses as ''style pompier'^^—if hecomes on such a school, he pushes it aside as untypicalof the French. What is most typical of France is whatis most beautiful. This attitude encourages Frenchmento make and keep France beautiful.On the contrary, the attitude of American culturalsnobs encourages ugliness in America. The student ofour Wisconsin professor, being told—with howevermany crocodile tears—that Americans have alwaysbeen hostile to art, that they live, willy-nilly in an aes-thetic jungle, is not encouraged to go out and do some-thing about the ribbon building and the filling stationsthat destroy the beauty of our countryside. It is hard toget him interested in preserving the great architecturalachievements of the American past—he has been as-sured that they are not worth preserving. I was told[ 9 ]only the other day that the French quarter of New Or-leans is about to be overtopped by a two-story highwaythat will send trucks roaring through the air betweenthe old houses and the Mississippi. There are some im-mediate economic advantages. Why not give in to themwhen one is assured that America never had any cultureworth bothering about?The collection we are going to visit this evening is avisible argument for the age of American culture. Itgoes back indeed to the very event that was, until re-cently^ believed to mark the beginnings of the fine artsin America.Modern researches have carried the history of Amer-ican painting back to the i66o's and even exhumedsome really beautiful pictures painted on these shoresin the seventeenth century. However, it was oncethought that the opening impetus was given to Ameri-can painting by the arrival in New England during1729 of a well-known and accomplished painter fromold England, John Smibert. Even if we can now carryAmerican painting further back, Smibert's arrival re-mains a key development. After a brilliant start inthe seventeenth century, New England painting hadlagged, particularly behind that of New York wherethere was in the 1720's a powerful school which Inamed, some years ago, the Patroon Painters. Smibert'sinfluence revivified New England painting, making itthe most powerful school on the continent, a leadershipit held into the nineteenth century.[ 10 ]Smibert's contributions to American art were indeeddouble: he was a painter himself and an importer ofEuropean models for painters. Both of these directionsare represented in the Bowdoin collections.We shall find in the exhibition we shall visit in a mo-ment two portraits by Smibert. They are sensitive, sober,unflamboyant. Evidence exists that Smibert left a suc-cessful career in England for the American colonies be-cause of the perpetual pressure there was on him in anaristocratic society to paint glittering, flattering images.Amusingly enough, he encountered a similar pressurein Boston, where a successful merchant rather liked tobe painted as if he were a lord. But in New England itwas a pressure that could often be evaded—and he didsuccessfully evade it in the two portraits which Bowdoinowns. Although prose rather than poetry, the picturesare technically accomplished works presenting a solidbase for the development of a democratic portrait art.More exciting to the modern imagination is the stu-dio Smibert established in Boston which can be consid-ered the first museum of European art on this continent.It remained more or less intact for many years afterSmibert's death in 1 75 1 , becoming an adjunct to a paintshop kept by his nephew.Let us imagine ourselves in the shoes of a young sad-dler from Maryland who had some ambitions to be apainter and whom the tides of life had landed in 1765on the streets of Boston. The young man's name isCharles Willson Peale; he is to become one of the lead-[ II ]ing painters in America—and he will eventually writean autobiography. He tells us that he happened in Bos-ton on a color shop which "had some figures with orna-mental signs upon it. . . . Becoming a little acquaintedwith the owner of the shop, he told me that a relationof his had been a painter, and said he would give me afeast. Leading me upstairs, he introduced me into apainter's room, an appropriate apartment lined withgreen cloth or baize, where there were a number of pic-tures unfinished.''"^ There were also copies of Europeanmasterpieces, old master drawings, and many prints.Peale stared about him thunderstruck, for he hadnever known that the world of art was as rich as this.He stammered for a moment before he succeeded inasking the color dealer what had been the name of hiswonderful uncle. Smibert, the man replied, John Smi-bert. Peale then mourned that Smibert was dead, andwondered whether any painters still lived who couldequal him. The dealer told him about a man who re-sided down the street, a man called Copley.That Copley was kind to Peale when he called,showed the young saddler his work, and lent him apainting to copy, is less germane to our subject than thatmany an American painter, including Copley himself,found inspiration in the Smibert collection of Europeanart which Peale considered such a "feast." Today, somedishes from that feast are almost certainly in Bowdoin's* I have translated Peale's autobiographical statement from the third per-son to the first person.[ 12 ]possession and a few may well await your tasting aroundthe corner.There is a cloud of evidence, which Mr. Sadik has inhis catalogue of Colonial and Federal Portraits ana-lyzed with an admirable conservatism, that when theSmibert collection was sold, parts of it were bought byJames Bowdoin III and bequeathed by him to the col-lege that bears his father's name. At the head of the listaccording to eighteenth-century ideas was a copy ofPoussin's The Continence of Scipio^ a canvas described andpraised in many documents of the time. Two other cop-ies of European masterpieces in Bowdoin's possessionalso seem to have come from Smibert's studio. Todaywe take copies less seriously than did the eighteenth cen-tury—we have other ways of becoming familiar withthe great art of the past—and thus Smibert's copies didnot make the trip down from Maine to New York.However, examples from Bowdoin's fine collectionof old master drawings did make the trip. You will no-tice that many of them, and some of the very best, cameto Bowdoin College in 1 8 1 1 through the bequest ofJames Bowdoin III. That this benefactor bought draw-ings from Smibert's collection is made clear by inscrip-tions on some of them. Exactly how many came fromthe source we do not know. It is agreeable to imaginethat the great drawing by Breughel, which is the starof the collection, passed under Peale's eyes way back in1765 when the young saddler yearned for art. In anycase, the presence of this drawing and many others in[ 13 ]the Bowdoin collection as part of that first gift revealsthat they have been cherished on these shores for morethan 1 50 years.Smibert had an American pupil— or^ perhaps, Ishould say an American follower—who was a morecharming painter than he, and was, indeed, our greatestartist of the first half of the eighteenth century. Thisartist's name was, as you know, Robert Feke, and of hisbest work Bowdoin owns a disproportionate share: fivecanvases out of the very small remaining oeuvre of anartist whose mature career lasted less than a decade.Most museums—the Metropolitan and the NationalGallery are examples—do not own a great Feke.Bowdoin owns— I repeat—five including his mostelaborate picture and only full-length. General SamuelWaldo,When most under Smibert's influence, Feke paintedas his master liked to do, shrewd character studies, butwhen he hit his mature stride he preferred—as theBowdoin portraits show— a more lyrical view.Looked at from the standards of the Old World,where class evolution was slow, so slow, the Colonialaristocrats were characters in a fairy tale. Cinderellarode down the streets of Boston in her pumpkin car-riage, but she did not have to fear the chimes of mid-night; her horses would never change back to mice. Sit-ting behind a ledger heavy with the records of pros-perity, Dick Whittington knew that he had been hisown puss in boots. Out of a frowning coast and a dark[ 14 ]forest had come a pot of gold; the rainbow's end restedpermanently on New York. Wealth, position, grace,ample living; these were the gifts of America. Howcould you be crabbed and sad; you had to sing.Feke's Bowdoin pictures are lyrical in mood, naive inconception, simple in technique, bright in color (al-though some of the flesh tones seem to have faded). Tothese attributes, Feke added plasticity. He went furtherthan any previous American-born painter into the thirddimension, giving shape in addition to outline, addingweight to flat forms. He did this in a very simple man-ner. His men's figures are stylized into cones; his wom-en's into a contrast between a few tight and expansiveforms.After 1750, the drift toward the Declaration of In-dependence expressed itself in portraiture by a rise todominance of a prime concern with personal idiosyn-crasy which had always been present as an undertone inAmerican art. Significantly, once Feke had struck hiselegant stride, low church ministers no longer sat tohim. In a few decades these men of God were to becalled by Tory orators "the black regiment," for theyincited the Colonists to Civil War. Now they expressed,perhaps unconsciously, their disapproval of Colonialaristocratic dependence by shunning the accomplishedFeke and leading their congregations to a humble manof the people who painted houses as well as portraits.His name was Joseph Badger and Bowdoin owns anexcellent pickle-faced portrait from his brush.[ 15 ]I must confess that I have now begun to dip into alecture on American Colonial painting in general thatI have given on many other occasions. That I can dothis so easily is an indication that the Bowdoin collectionexemplifies extremely well the development of Ameri-can portraiture in what was its great era: from Smibertthrough Stuart. You have a first-class Copley and awhole galaxy of Stuarts. Sully is well represented andRembrandt Peale. But now that I am mentioningnames, the realization comes over me that what is beingexhibited in New York is only a small part of the hold-ings of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. I havejust been working on a book about Winslow Homer andknow that, through the activity of Professor PhilipBeam and Marvin Sadik, you have just acquired thememorabilia from his Prout's Neck studio to add tofine pictures you already own. And, of course, if I al-lowed my feet to stray from my own path of Americanart, I would find myself confronted with a whole seriesof vistas where the Bowdoin collections shine. In themeanwhile, the pictures wait, and the moment hassurely come for me to sit down. Congratulations andthank you.[ i6 ]

Speech Given on the Occasion of the Exhibition Colonial & Federal Portraits

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Speech Given on the Occasion of the Exhibition Colonial & Federal Portraits

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