Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 3

Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 3

John Henri Isaac Browere, the son of Jacob Browere and Ann Catharine

Gendon, was born at No. 55, Warren Street,

 

[Illustration: JOHN HENRI ISAAC BROWERE]

 

New York city, November 18, 1792, and died at his house opposite the old

mile-stone, in the Bowery, in the city of his birth, September 10, 1834,

and was buried in the Carmine Street Churchyard. He was of Dutch

descent, one of those innumerable claimants of heirship to Anneke Jans,

through Adam Brouwer, of Ceulen, who came to this country and settled on

Long Island, in 1642. Adam Brouwer’s name was really Berkhoven, but the

name of his business, Brouwer or Brewer, became attached to him, so that

his descendants have been transmitted by his trade-name, and thus, as is

often the case, a new surname introduced. His second son, Jacob Adam

Brouwer, or Jacob son of Adam the Brewer, married Annetje Bogardus,

granddaughter of Reverend Edward Bogardus and Anneke Jansen (corrupted

to Jans); and among the most persistent pursuers of the intangible

fortune of Anneke Jans has been the family of Browere.

 

John Browere was entered as a student at Columbia College, but did not

remain to be graduated, owing doubtless to his early marriage, on April

30, 1811, to Eliza Derrick, of London, England. He turned his attention

to art and became a pupil of Archibald Robertson, the miniature-painter,

who came to this country from Scotland, in 1791, with a commission from

David Stuart, Earl of Buchan, to paint, for his gallery at Aberdeen, a

portrait of Washington. Later on, Archibald Robertson, with his brother

Alexander, opened at No. 79, Liberty Street, New York, the well-known

Columbian Academy, where, for thirty years, these Scotchmen maintained a

school, for the instruction of both sexes in drawing and in painting,

and where Vanderlyn, Inman, Cummings, and other of the early New York

artists, profited by their training. At the present time, when

miniature-painting is again coming into vogue, it is interesting to

reflect that the letters which passed between Archibald Robertson in

this country, and his brother Andrew in Scotland, form the best treatise

that can be found upon the charming art of painting in little. These

letters, after having remained in manuscript for the better part of a

century, have recently been given to the public, in a charming volume of

“Letters and Papers of Andrew Robertson,” edited by his daughter, Miss

Emily Robertson, of Lansdowne Terrace, Hampton Wick, England.

 

Determined to improve himself still further, Browere accepted the offer

of his brother, who was captain of a trading-vessel to Italy, to

accompany him abroad; and for nearly two years the young man travelled

on foot through Italy, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, France, and

England, diligently studying art and more especially sculpture.

Returning to New York, he began modelling, and soon produced a bust of

Alexander Hamilton, from Archibald Robertson’s well-known miniature of

the Federal martyr, which was pronounced a meritorious attempt to

produce a model in the round from a flat surface. Being of an inventive

turn, he began experimenting to obtain casts from the living face in a

manner and with a composition different from those commonly employed by

sculptors. After many trials and failures, he perfected his process,

with the superior results shown in his work.

 

Browere’s first satisfactory achievement was a mask of his friend and

preceptor, Robertson, and his second was that of Judge Pierrepont

Edwards, of Connecticut. But the most important of his very early works

was the mask of John Paulding, the first to die of the captors of André;

and this mask, made in 1817, was followed later by masks of Paulding’s

coadjutors, Williams and Van Wart; so that we owe to Browere’s nimble

fingers the only authentic likenesses we have of these conspicuous

patriots of the Revolution.

 

Browere wrote verse and painted pictures in addition to his modelling,

and, in the spring of 1821, made an exhibition at the old gallery of the

American Academy of the Fine Arts, in Chambers Street, New York, which

called forth the following card from his early instructor, Robertson,

who was one of the directors of the Academy. It is interesting,

notwithstanding the unconscious partiality one is apt to have for a

former pupil, and is addressed:

 

_To the American Public._

 

Having for many years been intimately acquainted with John H. I.

Browere, of the City of New York, I deem it a duty which I owe to

him as an artist, and to the public as judges, to say that from my

own observation of his works both as a painter, poet, and sculptor,

I think him endowed with a great genius by nature and first talents

by industry. This my opinion, his works lately exhibited in the

Gallery of the American Academy of Fine Arts, New York, fully

justify and is amply corroborated by all, who with unprejudiced

eye, view the works of his hand.

 

ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON.

 

NEW YORK, May 21, 1821.

 

It was left, however, for “The Nation’s Guest” to lift Browere’s art

into prominence. At the request of the New York city authorities,

Lafayette permitted Browere, in July of 1825, to make a cast of his

face. This was so successful that from this time on, Browere was devoted

to making casts of the most noted characters in the country’s history,

who were then living, with the purpose of forming a national gallery of

the busts of famous Americans. He intended to have them reproduced in

bronze, and devoted years of labor and the expenditure of much money to

the furtherance of his scheme. He wrote to Madison: “Pecuniary emolument

never has been my aim. The honor of being favored by my country biases

sordid views.” In 1828 he wrote to the same: “I have expended $12,087 in

the procuration of the specimens I now have.” These included masks of

Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and later

was added that of Van Buren; Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Lafayette;

De Witt Clinton; Generals Philip Van Cortlandt, Alexander Macomb and

Jacob Brown; Commodore David Porter; Secretary of the Navy Samuel L.

Southard of New Jersey; and Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush of

Pennsylvania; Justice of the United States Supreme Court Philip

Pendleton Barbour; and the great commoner, Henry Clay; Doctors Samuel

Latham Mitchill, Valentine Mott, and David Hosack; Edwin Forrest and Tom

Hilson, the actors; Charles Francis Adams and Philip Hone; Thomas Addis

Emmet and Doctor Cooper of South Carolina; Colonel Stone and Major Noah,

of newspaper notoriety; Dolly Madison and Francis Wright; Gilbert

Stuart, Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart; and other personages favorably

known in their day, but who have slipped out of the niche of worldly

immortality, so that even their names fail to awaken a recollection of

themselves. Such is the mutability of fame.

 

The time, however, was not ripe for the public patronage of the Fine

Arts. There was, too, a feeling abroad that it savored of monarchy and

favored classes, to perpetuate men and deeds by statues and monuments.

Another cause that hampered Browere was the lack of protection accorded

to such works. He complains to Madison: “I regret to say that as yet no

law has been passed to protect modelling and sculpture, and therefore I

have been hindered from completing the gallery, fearful of having the

collection pirated.” So disheartened did he become with the little

interest shown in his project and the work he had accomplished for it,

that at one time he contemplated visiting Panama, and presenting the

busts of the more prominent subjects to the republics of South America,

in order to incite them to further efforts for freedom. Finally he was

forced to abandon his scheme of a national gallery, owing to want of

support, and the direct opposition--“jealous enmity,” Browere calls

it--of his brother artists, the old American Academy faction led by

Colonel Trumbull, and the new National Academy followers led by William

Dunlap.

 

They maligned his pretensions because he was honest enough to call his

method for accomplishing what he attempted “_a process_.” Surely,

judging from results, it was superior to any other known method of

obtaining a life mask, and it seems most unfortunate that his “process”

has to be counted among “the lost arts”; for neither he nor his son, who

was acquainted with both the composition and the method of applying it,

has left a word of information on the subject. When the public press

attacked Browere and his method for the rumored maltreatment of

President Jefferson, he replied: “Mr. Browere never has followed and

never will follow the usual course, knowing it to be fallacious and

absolutely bad. The manner in which he executes portrait-busts from

life is unknown to all but himself, and the invention is his own, for

which he claims exclusive rights, but it is infinitely milder than the

usual course.” That his method of taking the mask was accomplished

without discomfort to the subject is fully attested by the number of

persons who submitted to it, as also by the many certificates given by

Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Lafayette, Gilbert Stuart, and others to that

effect.

 

In the following letter from Browere to Trumbull it will be seen the

writer does not attempt to conceal his feelings of resentment:

 

NEW YORK, 12 July, 1826.

 

_Sir_:

 

The very illiberal and ungentleman-like manner in which Col.

Trumbull treated the execution, &c., of my portrait-busts of

Ex-President Adams and Honorable Charles Carroll with the statue of

Ex-President Jefferson, late displayed in the banquetting hall of

the Hon. Common Council of New York, has evidenced a personal

ill-will and hostility to me that I shall not pass over in silence.

The envy and jealousy inherent in your nature and expressed in

common conversations intimate to me a man of a perverse and

depraved mind.

 

Rest assured, Sir, I fear not competition with you as a portrait or

historic painter; I know your fort, and your failings. To convince

you that I know somewhat of the Arts of Design, I shall

immediately commence an analysis of your four pictures painted for

Congress, and shall endeavor therein to refer to each and every

figure plagiarized from English and other prints. Your assertion to

me that you made your portraits therein to correspond with their

characters, will assuredly go for as much as they deserve. In my

opinion, ideal likenesses ought not to be palmed on a generous

public for real ones.

 

Remember what was said on the floor of Congress in reference to