Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 10

Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 10

Of Clinton’s own bust the eminent Irish patriot and American advocate,

Thomas Addis Emmet, wrote to Browere:

 

NEW YORK July 6th 1826.

 

_Sir_:

 

If my opinion as to the merits of the portrait busts I have seen of

your workmanship, can be of any advantage to you, it is entirely at

your service. I really think them all entitled to great praise for

fidelity of __EXPRESSION__ and accuracy of resemblance. Those of

General La Fayette and Governor Clinton are, as far as I can judge,

the most perfect likenesses of the originals that have as yet been

presented to the public.

 

I am, Dear Sir, your obt Servt

 

THOMAS ADDIS EMMET.

 

 

 

[Illustration]

 

 

 

 

XI

 

_Henry Clay_

 

 

Henry Clay, who wore the appellation, conferred upon Pitt, of “the Great

Commoner,” long before it was given to Mr. Gladstone, has left behind

him perhaps the most distinct personality of any of the statesmen of his

era. Where Daniel Webster counted his admirers by hundreds, Henry Clay

was idolized by thousands; the one appealing to the head and the other

to the heart. His strongly marked features are familiar to every one,

from the scores of portraits of him to be found here, there, and

everywhere; while there are, living to-day, a large number of people who

knew Clay in the flesh; so that Browere’s bust of him needs no

perfunctory certificate to assure of its truthfulness. It is certainly

human to a wonderful degree, and there could scarcely be any truer

portraiture than this, wherein we have the very features of the living

man down to the minutest detail.

 

Clay was of striking physique. He was quite tall, nearly six feet two

inches, rather sparsely built, with a crane-like neck that he endeavored

to conceal by his collar and stock. He had an immense mouth, phenomenal

for size as well as shape, and kindly blue eyes which were electrical

when kindled. Yet he was so magnetic in his power over men that when he

was defeated for the Presidency, thousands of his Whig followers wept as

they heard the news.

 

Henry Clay was born in Hanover county, Virginia, April 12, 1777, and

died at Washington, June 29, 1852, preceding his compeer Webster to the

grave by only a few months. On reaching his majority, he removed to

Lexington, Kentucky, which became his future home, although he was so

rarely out of public life that he was comparatively little there. Having

chosen the law for his profession, he was admitted to the bar, and

before attaining his thirtieth year, was sent to the Senate of the

United States. He was strenuous in his support of home industries, and

endeavored by legislation to enforce upon legislators the wearing of

homespun cloths. So ardent was he in this, that his course led to a duel

with Humphrey Marshall, in which both were slightly wounded.

 

At the close of the war of 1812, Clay was one of the commissioners

appointed to negotiate the treaty of peace with

 

[Illustration: HENRY CLAY

 

Age 48]

 

Great Britain, and as such signed the Treaty of Ghent. He was known as

“the great Pacificator,” from his course in the events that led to the

Missouri Compromise and later averted Southern “nullification.” He was

an active and bitter opponent of Andrew Jackson, and supported John

Quincy Adams against him for the Presidency, his reward being the

portfolio of State; but there was no bargain and corruption about this

business as his enemies claimed and which haunted Clay’s political

career throughout the rest of his life. He was an ambitious man, and his

failure to reach the goal of his ambition--the presidential chair--was a

fatal blow.

 

Clay was undoubtedly one of the greatest orators this country has

produced, and a man with much natural ability, but little study and

cultivation. His name is one to conjure with in old Kentucky, and it is

with a moist eye that personal reminiscences of Clay are related out

there in the blue grass State, even at this day, nearly half a century

after his decease.

 

[Illustration]

 

 

 

 

XII

 

_America’s Master Painter_

 

_Gilbert Stuart_

 

 

One artist, and he easily the first of American painters, did not deny

to Browere and his works the merit that was their due. On the contrary,

he saw the fidelity and great value of these life masks, and gave

practical encouragement to the maker of them by submitting to his

process and by giving a certificate of approval. He did this, not so

much that his living face might be transmitted to posterity, as to test

the truth of the newspaper reports of the suffering and danger

experienced by the venerable and venerated Jefferson, and thus by his

example encourage others to go and do likewise. The result was the

superb head of Gilbert Stuart, herewith reproduced from the original

bust, in the Redwood Library, at Newport, Rhode Island. This noble

action of Stuart must have been as light out of darkness to Browere.

 

Upon the completion of the mask, from which this bust was made, Stuart

gave to Browere the following emphatic certificate:

 

BOSTON November 29th 1825.

 

Mr. Browere, of the city of New York, has this day made a portrait

bust of me from life, with which I am perfectly satisfied and which

I hope will remove any illiberal misrepresentations that may

deprive the nation from possessing like records of more important

men.

 

G. STUART.

 

 

 

The “illiberal misrepresentations” referred to were of course the

reported inconveniences that Jefferson had suffered; and praise such as

this, from Stuart, is, as approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley, praise

indeed.

 

A few days afterward the Boston “Daily Advertiser” announced: “The

portrait bust of Gilbert Stewart, Esq., lately executed by Mr. Browere,

will be exhibited by him at the Hubard Gallery, this evening. This

exhibition is made by him for the purpose of showing that he can present

a perfect likeness, and he will prove at the same time, by the

certificate of Mr. Stewart, that the operation is without pain.” Two

days later the local press fairly teemed with laudatory notices of

Browere’s work. The Boston “American” said: “This bust has been adjudged

by all who have examined it and are acquainted with the original to be a

striking and perfect resemblance.” The “Commercial Gazette” said: “It is

a fine likeness, in truth we think the best we ever saw of any one. We

particularly enquired of Mr. Stuart’s family if he suffered by any

difficulty of breathing or if the process was in any degree painful, and

were assured that there was nothing of an unpleasant or painful nature

in it.”

 

Considering Stuart’s eminence in art, a position fully recognized in his

lifetime, and his irascible temper and unyielding character, such action

as his toward Browere, not only in submitting to have the mask taken,

but in certifying to it and permitting it to be publicly exhibited for

the benefit of Browere’s reputation, speaks volumes of the highest

authority in support of the workman and his work.

 

Stuart’s daughter, Jane, who died at Newport, in 1888, at a very

advanced age, and was as “impossible” in some respects as was her

distinguished father, remembered well the incident of the mask being

taken, and testified to its marvellous life-speaking qualities. Having

lost all knowledge of its whereabouts, she searched for years in the

hope of finding it, since she looked upon it as the next thing to having

her father before her. Finally, in the Centennial year, it was

discovered

 

[Illustration: GILBERT STUART

 

Age 70]

 

in the possession of Browere’s son, and was purchased by Mr. David King,

of Newport, as a present for Miss Stuart. But Miss Stuart felt that her

little cottage, so well remembered by many visitors to Newport, was no

place for so big a work, and desired that it might be placed in a public

gallery, which wish Mr. King complied with, by presenting it to the

Redwood Library, at Newport, where it may be seen by all interested in

Stuart or in Browere’s life masks. Jane Stuart is the subject of Colonel

Wentworth Higginson’s charming paper, “One of Thackeray’s Women,” in his

volume of Essays entitled “Concerning All of Us.”

 

Gilbert Stuart was born in what was called the Narragansett country, on

December 3, 1755. The actual place of his birth is now called Hammond

Mills, near North Kingston, Rhode Island, about nine miles from

Narragansett Pier; and the old-fashioned gambrel-roofed, low-portalled

house, in which the future artist first saw light, still stands at the

head of Petaquamscott Pond. The snuff-mill set up by Gilbert Stewart,

the father of the painter, who had come over from Perth, in Scotland, at

the suggestion of a fellow Scotchman, Doctor Thomas Moffatt, to

introduce the manufacture of snuff into the colonies, was located, by

the race, immediately under the room in which Stuart was born, both

being part of the same building, so that Stuart’s excuse for taking

snuff, that he was born in a snuff-mill, is literally true.

 

When four months old, the third and youngest child of the snuff-grinder

and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth Anthony, was carried, on Palm Sunday,

to the Episcopal church and baptized “Gilbert Stewart.” The sig