Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 4

Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 4

NEW YORK, 31 July, 1829.

 

_Gentlemen_:

 

For several years past I have strictly devoted myself to the

profession of the liberal arts and flatter myself that my efforts

have not been detrimental to their interests. The reason why or

wherefore I, an American artist, bearing with me an unblemished

moral reputation, should have been selected for exclusion by both

the American Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the self-denominated

Academy of Design, appears mysterious and illiberal, and not in

accordance with the principles of religion or democracy. Had not an

enthusiastic love of and devotion to the Fine Arts guided my

reason, at this day I should have become one of the most inveterate

enemies to both institutions. Philosophy has made me what I now am,

viz., the sincere friend of man and admirer of the works of his

hands. As such I have,--written injuries as sand--favors on the

tablet of memory.

 

As one of the great body of artists of America I deem it an

incumbent duty to advance the beauteous arts by all honorable

means, and to chastise arrogance, presumption, ignorance, and

wilful malevolence. With chagrin I have viewed the sinister and

aristocratical proceedings of the National Academy, and the ill

results that must eventually follow its longer continuance, and

therefore have publicly deprecated its wickedness. As one of the

regenerators of the old or American Academy of Fine Arts, I now

make bold in saying to its directors a few things, which if duly

weighed and followed must result favorably to its vitality and best

interests, and be the medium of establishing the reputation of

artists on firm and lasting basis, viz.: by collecting around the

American Academy and with it all the genius and talent in the arts

of design which our country possesses and creating a fund

sufficient to all its wants and expenditures.

 

Already, twenty-five artists of respectability of this city await

one effort of the American Academy to reëstablish its original

standing and reputation, and they will join heart and hand to

oppose the Academy of Design (truly so called) by every work of

their hands done and to be done. The one effort alluded to is to

procure at a reasonable rent say from 800 to 1000 dollars per annum

the second story of the large and splendid building now erecting

corner of Anthony Street and Broadway. The undersigned is perfectly

well assured that from $1000 to $1500 per annum can be realized

(exclusive of rent) from daily exhibitions of the works of living

artists not in connection with the National Academy. He is fully

satisfied from late observations that twenty-five new pieces or

paintings can be procured monthly, all of which may be procured on

loan for one month at least. This being the case the Academy must

eventually and in a very short time supplant the puny efforts of a

few National Esquires, a majority of whom are scarce entering their

teens.

 

The subscribing artist respectfully informs you that the exhibition

of the rough specimens of his art, viz., “The Inquisition of

Spain,” at No. 315 Broadway, did positively realize to him, in

eighteen months, _Seven thousand and sixty-nine dollars_. If, then,

such an exhibition could realize such a sum, what would an

exhibition of splendid historic and allegoric subjects, with

portraits, miniatures, and landscapes by our native artists, not

realize under the guidance of such a respectable board of directors

as is that of the American Academy of Fine Arts?

 

The names of Trumbull, Vanderlyn, Frothingham, etc., alone would

act as magic on a discriminating public, provided fair specimens of

their talents be judiciously arranged for public inspection. Boston

has done wonders this year in her Athenæum. Why, then, should we,

equally blessed with native talent, despair, and sit down in

sack-cloth and ashes, when a single effort can make us her equal

and rival? Gentlemen, I am enthusiastic, and yet have maturely

weighed each and every reason against your regeneration, and boldly

assert more is for you than against you. The three preceding

mentioned gentlemen are equal to, if not superior in talent to, any

Boston can produce. Our portrait-painters generally bid fair to

excel. All that is wanted is your help as a body corporate, your

co-operation as lovers of the Fine Arts. Where, if you become

extinct, shall we go to study the models of antiquity? Alas! we

know of no other place wherein the experience of ages is collected,

en masse, no place wherein to receive that instruction so essential

to a knowledge of our profession. Mr. Bowen, the proprietor, has

offered to you through Colonel Trumbull, the room alluded to at a

fair compensation; it now rests with you to say for once and for

all, “We will,” or, “we will not continue the patrons of art.”

Wishing to yourselves individually, and collectively as a body

corporate, health and peace, I remain,

 

Gentlemen, truly your Friend in the Fine Arts,

 

JOHN H. I. BROWERE.

 

 

 

No formal action is known to have been taken upon this communication;

but the antagonism plainly evident as existing between the new Academy

of Design and the old Academy of the Fine Arts, forms a lively chapter

in the history of American art. Full particulars of the strife are given

in Dunlap’s book and in Cummings’s “Historic Annals of the National

Academy of Design.” But these accounts are from biased adherents of the

new institution and bitter opponents of the old, so that, for a brief

but philosophical and judicial consideration of the subject, one must

turn to John Durand’s sketch of Colonel Trumbull in the “American Art

Review” for 1880.

 

Browere died, after only a few hours’ illness, of cholera; and it is

pathetic to picture the disappointed sculptor, on his deathbed,

directing, as he did, that the heads should be sawed off the most

important busts, and boxed up for forty years, at the end of which

period he hoped their exhibition would elicit recognition for their

merit and value as historical portraits from life. This directed

mutilation was not made; but the busts never saw the light of day until

the Centennial year, when a few of them were placed on exhibition in

Philadelphia. But not being connected with the national celebration,

they were a mere side-show, and were not in a position to attract

attention. Indeed, the fact of their exhibition was unheralded, and has

only recently become known.

 

Call Browere’s work what one will,--process, art, or mechanical,--the

result gives the most faithful portrait possible, down to the minutest

detail, the very living features of the breathing man, a likeness of

the greatest historical significance and importance. A single glance

will show the marked difference between Browere’s work and the ordinary

life cast by the sculptor or modeller, no matter how skilful he may be.

Browere’s work is real, human, lifelike, inspiring in its truthfulness,

while other life masks, even the celebrated ones by Clark Mills, who

made so many, are dead and heavy, almost repulsive in their

lifelessness. It seems next to marvelous how he was able to preserve so

wonderfully the naturalness of __EXPRESSION__. His busts are imbued with

animation; the individual character is there, so simple and direct that,

next to the living man, he has preserved for us the best that we can

have--a perfect _facsimile_. One experiences a satisfaction in

contemplating these busts similar to that afforded by the reflected

image of the daguerreotype. Both may be “inartistic” in the sense that

the artist’s conception is wanting; but for historical human documents

they outweigh all the portraits ever limned or modelled.

 

Browere left a wife and eight children, his second child and eldest son,

Alburtis D. O. Browere, inheriting the artistic temperament of the

father. He was born at Tarrytown, March 17, 1814, and died at Catskill,

February 17, 1887. After his father’s death, he entered the schools of

the National Academy of Design, and, in 1841, gained the first prize of

$100, in competition with twenty-four others, for his picture of

“Canonicus Treating with the English,” as detailed in Thatcher’s “Lives

of the Indians.” Previous to this, when only eighteen years old, he was

awarded a silver medal, by the American Institute in New York, “for the

best original oil painting,” the title of which has been forgotten. He

painted several pictures with Rip Van Winkle as the subject, and among

his contemporaries and friends was highly appreciated as an artist and

as a man. He went to California soon after the opening to the east of

that El Dorado, where he remained several years, painting many pictures

of mining scenes. It was he who added the draperies to the busts made

from his father’s life masks--an addition much to be regretted; but, on

the other hand, it was his filial reverence that preserved these

invaluable human documents, and has permitted us to see and know how

many of the great characters who have gone before really appeared in the

flesh, how they actually looked when they lived and moved and had their

being.

 

[Illustration]

 

 

 

 

IV

 

_The Captors of André_

 

 

“While Arnold is handed down with execration to future times, posterity

will repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and

Williams.” These words of Alexander Hamilton, written to John Laurens

shortly after the taking of André, form a fitting text for the chapter

introducing Browere’s busts of those patriots. It is fitting, because of