USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 46
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But it is the interior of the Pierce-Nichols house which is of inter- est in connection with McIntire's development as an artist. The west parlor, square and substantial, was finished in 1782 and is known as the Georgian parlor; it has attractive embrasures, window seats, and a beautiful mantelpiece. The east parlor was done in 1800, when McIntire had adapted for himself the Adam manner, and this room is by some said to be the most beautiful room in New England. It
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has far more elegance than the Georgian parlor, due partly to the shape, which is oblong with mirrors at each end giving more spacious- ness. The embrasured windows without seats have more slenderness, and the little settees were made to measurements that fit the embras- ures; the same is true of the beautiful gilt mirrors, which were ordered in France to fit the space made by McIntire between the pilasters of the overmantel. The carving of the mouldings and frieze with rosettes and vertical reeded groups, the mantelpiece with its garlands and little classic figures, restrained as it is, contrasts with the simpler and more sturdy woodwork of the Georgian parlor.
The Pingree White house, 1810, was probably one of the last that McIntire built. It has recently been arranged as a museum, by The Essex Institute, and with its old Salem and Oriental carved fur- niture, English china and silverware, gives a very vivid idea of the domestic surroundings enjoyed by the families of the successful mer- chant captains of Salem.
Refinements of household furnishings followed the influence of importations to some extent, but just as the joiner and the cabinet- maker redesigned in their own way, the other craftsmen, pewterer, silversmith, blacksmith, brass worker, gilder and clockmaker did, too.
Pewter was commonly used after 1750 until about 1825, then china gradually replaced it. Even so, the five Essex County names that are mentioned above others are: Israel Trask, Oliver and George, his brothers, and Eben Smith, at first working for Trask, but with his son Eben, independent during the 'forties; all worked in Beverly after 1825.42 Israel Trask ( 1786-1867) is said to have been one of the few pewterers in the country who made use of chiseled decorations. Coffee pots and whale oil lamps were his specialty. Eben Smith (1773-1849) made both britannia and pewter ware; tea pots, coffee pots, lamps and flagons came from his workshop; he also combined the manufacture of hose nozzles with designing pewter com- munion sets.
Silver was naturally in keeping with the increased luxury of the houses. Entertaining was a social necessity and tea services and can- dlesticks were therefore in general demand. The style was set by the classicism of the period, but proportion and simplicity were remem- bered from the seventeenth century. There were a great many silver-
42. J. B. Kerfoot: "American Pewter."
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smiths and jewelers in the county at the end of the eighteenth century, no one of whom seems to have been distinguished above another.
The blacksmith was part sculptor in the making of firebacks, but frequently copied imported designs. Firebacks in The Essex Institute are dated as early at 1660 and 1662, probably imported. Weather- vanes were sometimes the product of the smith, sometimes of the woodcarver; the shapes varied with local fancy. Usually they took the form of some domestic animal, occasionally fish or ships. But the smiths have received no recognition for the art which they wrought.
For the most part blacksmiths continued to supply farm and kitchen. New devices were added to the conveniences of cooking; swinging cranes, mechanical spit-turners, and the device attached to a kettle which permitted water to be poured from it without its removal from the hook over the flames. In the late eighteenth century iron was scarce; utensils are found which employ economies where pos- sible. Wooden handles replaced those of wrought iron, a wooden body formed the core to which tinned sheet iron was attached to make a candelabrum.43
Cauldrons and copper skillets of various sizes were part of inti- mate domestic ornament. Brass locks and hinges, door knobs, fire sets, lamps, and lanthorns glittered in the elegant quarters of the house.
Gilders applied their skill to carved mirrors and picture frames and to the cabinets of clocks the makers of which vied with each other in matters of refinement of design. Newbury and Newburyport were important clock centers. Various members of the Balch and Mul- liken families were clockmakers there.
Portraits added a convincing note of substantiality to the family furnishings. With the possible exception of Jeremiah Dummer (sev- eral portraits have been attributed to Dummer, those of himself and his wife are signed and dated 1691, but the attribution is disputed) almost nothing is known of the portraiture of the seventeenth century, or for that matter of any painting. The artisan who dealt in and worked with paint obtained his living by any means available to him. The step is gradual from housepainter to coach painter, to sign painter, to landscape painter, figure and portrait painter, and no one
43. J. Seymour Lindsay: "Iron and Brass Implements of the English and American Home."
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phase is more worthy than the next. The same man turned his skill and imagination to each. A few of the wealthier colonists brought pic- tures with them from England; it is possible that successful sign painters tried their skill in imitation of these. The English them- selves had no painting tradition in the seventeenth century. Reynolds, Gainsborough, and their followers did not appear until nearly the middle of the eighteenth century. The pictures which were brought over were copies of the continental painters, or they were pictures painted by the same sort of people, limners (illuminers), who were painting in the colonies.
The limners adapted their skill to circumstances. It was the practice to paint a variety of pictures during the long winter months when traveling was difficult. Except for the face and occasionally the hands, which were left blank, the pictures were completely finished. These were carried about the country during the warm months and the prospective sitter would be asked to choose the pose and costume which suited his fancy. It is probable that the sitting itself didn't take very long. The merchant or farmer might be flattered by having his likeness painted, but he was probably unwilling to give much of his time to such a trivial pursuit. The limner was chiefly concerned with painting a picture which would attract a sitter and then with "getting a likeness." The problems of design and art were secondary.
These were the beginnings. The limners passed through Essex County, they may have belonged here; if they did, they have been recorded as house or sign painters. There were four Blythes who were painters of this kind in Salem shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century. Some of the pastel portraits done by Benjamin Blythe (1746 -? ) are owned by The Essex Institute. Felt mentions him in connection with the year 1769: "Benj. Blyth draws crayons at his father's house in the 'great street leading to Marblehead.' He painted with great success in coloured crayons. Many of his por- traits are still extant in the ancient families of this city."44
Moses Dupré Cole came to Newburyport in 1795; his son is known to have painted signs, portraits and made frames, but whether he was also a painter is not certain. Information concerning the nature of the work of Essex County artists and the extent of it, is obtained only by piecing together odd references. In 1809 Bentley
44. J. B. Felt : "Annals of Salem."
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writes of trying to get a portrait of an old friend, General Fiske: "A portrait, three-quarter face, was taken while he was in the Naval Service, by Cole and Blythe. They were wretched daubers at best, but they had much employment from the money of Privateer men. None of the portraits are finished, but they sometimes have taken likenesses. These were the only persons who undertook it at that time."+3 If the Blythe referred to is Benjamin, this judgment of his work is not so warm as that of Felt; it also means that Benjamin was working later than 1795, when the Coles came to Newburyport (the latest authentic mention of him is 1787). If the Blythe referred to was William ( 1773-1806), then he seems to have done some sort of painting other than houses, a fact otherwise uncertain. Possibly the Cole referred to is neither Moses Dupré nor his son, but some- one earlier. Finally, the passage cited suggests that a partnership existed. Whether these men shared a studio and painted separately, whether they took turns, whether one painted the background and the other drew the likenesses, is not known.
Samuel Bartoll (1765-1835) advertised military standards, signs, fireboards, landscapes, etc., in Salem, and is also said to have been a mural painter.
The important walls of many of the better houses were papered with fashionable French scenic paper, some of which still exists .* Occa- sionally local painters were called upon to duplicate the imported style which usually continued round the room without repeating and without allowance for doors and windows. Unfortunately, the art was thought little of; when the walls became shabby, these paintings were removed or covered, and only a few examples have survived. Sometimes the walls were painted on directly, either when the plaster surface was fresh (fresco) or with gauche (opaque water color) on dry plaster. More often, it seems, the practice was to paste blank white paper to the walls upon which the design was laid.
Sign painters followed the English tradition generally; the Medi- terranean influence was felt strongly through the work of Michele Felice Corné. In Salem, in 1804, "a collection of Ladies of taste began the decoration of the meeting house." Various engravings,
45. Diary of William Bentley.
*The Cook-Oliver house in Salem; the Lee house in Marblehead; the Lindens in Danvers ; the Ham house in Peabody contain samples.
Essex-69
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paintings, and busts of famous American citizens were employed for the purpose, among them, "to give a presence to our venerable ances- tors on the interesting occasion, a Painting of the venerable Governo: Endicott and another of the worthy Governor Leverett, both done by M. Corné, an Italian."46
Corne was probably the author of many of the wall paintings. The walls of the first and second story hallway of the Barnard house on Essex Street, Salem (at present inhabited by four tenant families ), are covered with scenes richly colored and well adapted to the spaces they decorate. The pictorial transition follows that of the architec- ture and varies accordingly. One panel suggest the influence of the Maritime Alps; another, a hunting scene, is more reminiscent of the English or French countryside; a third shows a woman's figure leaning from the window of a house which is unmistakably of Euro- pean design. The work is probably that of Corné. The paintings are a fine monument to the early Essex County art and well worth the study of the mural painter. Thick yellow varnish obscures some- what the original color, but has probably protected the paint from the neglect of local indifference.
Until recently there were two locally painted papers in a "house on High St.," Salem.47 One was a rustic scene, the other a picture of an early railroad. The artist is unknown, as is also the present whereabouts of the paintings; the house which they decorated is thought to have been destroyed by fire. The lack of local informa- tion has made it impossible to determine the precise location of the house before going to press. The recent fate of a painted circular stair of a "Norman St. House,"48 Salem, is also uncertain. (The houses of Norman St. were removed by wreckers in 1931.) From their description these paintings must have been painted toward the middle of the nineteenth century. In connection with the year 1842 Felt mentions four decorators working in Salem, David and Joseph Pulsifer, Daniel M. Shepherd, and Thomas Coleman. They were skilled in fresco work as well as in oils, according to Felt, who asserts erroneously that Coleman was the first to practice art, for Corné preceded him.
46. Diary of William Bentley, July 4, 1804.
47. Illustrated by Nancy V. McClelland: "Historic Wallpapers."
48. Described and illustrated by E. B. Allen : "Early American Wall Paintings."
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Corné was a fugitive from Italy during the French attack on Naples; he came to Salem in 1799 aboard the ship "Mt. Vernon," Elias Hasket Derby, owner. Probably as a result he painted the cupola ceiling of the Benjamin Pickman house in which Derby then dwelt. The painting, somewhat obliterated, is now to be seen in the garden of The Essex Institute; it is done in fresco. The dark hulls of a number of the Derby vessels ride buoyantly over foamy water; light billowy sails are silhouetted stiffly against the land. Corné painted pictures of many ships and numerous battle scenes during the War of 1812; none seem quite so gay as these.
Prosperous shipping stimulated the painter as much as the wood- carver. "Corné continues to enjoy his reputation as a painter of ships. In every house we see the ships of our harbor delineated for those who navigated them. Painting, before unknown, in its first efforts, is now common among our children."49 Ship pictures were much in demand at the time. There were expert painters in almost all the Mediterranean and Oriental ports; local artists were undoubt- edly influenced by the work brought home from voyages.
Sketches of vessels, sometimes in color, were occasionally made by officers writing their logs.30 In the Marine Room of the Peabody Museum in Salem are a few water colors of ships and harbors which were made by Edmund Stone, of Beverly, member of the crew of the ship "George," Salem; but for the most part local ship pictures were painted by carriage or sign painters. George Ropes (1788-1819) was born deaf and dumb in Salem and remained so during life. He is recorded as a successful sign painter. As a pupil of Corné he painted ship pictures after 1802 and was the chief support of his widowed mother and the other children.
Paintings of vessels were made as early as 1765. Three water colors of the schooner "Baltick" by an unknown artist are in the Peabody Museum. Water color for ship pictures is prevalent in the eighteenth and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century; in 1799 William Ward made an ink drawing of the ship "Friendship," which was touched with color. Benjamin F. West ( 1818-54), Salem, used both water color and oil; his painting of the ship "Margaret" is painted with gauche on cardboard. The design possesses good
49. Diary of William Bentley, January 6, 1804.
50. Robinson and Dow: "Sailing Ships of New England," Ist series.
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movement and the paint is fresh and crisp in harmony with it; his painting of the brig "Hamilton" was done in 1851 in oil; it is stiff and sluggish by contrast. William Henry Luscomb, Salem, 1805-66, also painted the "Hamilton" in oils in 1840. He was known as a "sign and fancy painter,"51 and made numerous oil paintings of Salem vessels. Oil is preferred toward the middle of the nineteenth century.
In other respects oil had been the accepted medium from the beginning, however. Sign painters used it, limners painted their por- traits with it, "fancy" painters used it for fireboards (which covered the open grate when it was not in use) and other decorative panels. Fireboards and a panel from the Forrester house in Salem are in The Essex Institute. A panel "having a rude painting of a ship on the stocks, with Indians at work as carpenters,"52 was taken in 1855 from the house of Samuel Moggaridge, shipbuilder, and is now in the New- buryport public library. Moggaridge died in 1754, but at what period the panel was introduced is not known. Another panel is that mentioned by Chase in his history of Haverhill.53 A view of the second meetinghouse was painted "after a steeple had been added, probably between 1750 and 1766, upon a panel over the mantelpiece in the front room of the 'Harrod House,' a famous tavern in its time, which stood a little north of the present City Hall. The panel was cut out to preserve the painting and is supposed to be still in the pos- session of a descendant of the family, unfortunately not a resident of Haverhill." Panels of this sort were apparently not uncommon. There is a view of a harbor with shipping now installed in the Whip- ple house in Ipswich.
Corné is known to have painted the four oil panels which are now in the East India Marine Museum in Salem. Two are fireboards showing views of Cape Town and of Canton factories; one is an alle- gorical panel of Salem harbor designed for the overdoorway of the museum; the fourth is a dramatic canvas which emphasizes the slug- gish calm of the driver of a "fish-machine" approaching the beach to meet the boats on a storm-tossed sea. Two rural scenes which deco- rate the mantel panels in "Oak Hill," Peabody, are also attributed to Corné. He must have been a busy worker, for by 1807 he was gone.
51. Robinson and Dow: "Sailing Ships of New England," Ist series.
52. G. F. Dow: "Sailing Ships of New England," 3d series.
53. Quoted by J. B. D. Cogswell : "History of Essex County, 1888."
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(He worked in Boston and then Newport, where he died.) Bentley notes the absence in speaking of William King, the showman and profile artist: "Mr. King has a panorama still in Salem (sixty feet long by ten feet high). It is the siege of Tripoli. The ships are done by Corne, formerly living in this town and introduced by E. H. Derby from Naples, the ships are good but the whole admits of some improvement."34
Improvement and polish seem to have combined the dual goal of the early Republic. The American people were politically independ- ent, but they looked carefully to Europe to learn how to act. With regard to portraiture, particularly, they were still artistically depend- ent. Miniature painting requires a meticulous techique which was not foreign to this striving for refinement, and there seems to have been some interest in small portaits painted on ivory or on the slightly larger surfaces of paper or cabinet-sized wood panels. Although ivory was used as painting surface in England as early as 1761, few miniatures of the middle eighteenth century are known in America. The art started as painting ornamental to bracelets, snuff boxes, and watch lids, and developed until during the last quarter of the eigh- teenth century it was deemed worthy of a frame.55
Nathaniel Hancock painted miniatures and advertised for sitters in Salem in 1805. John Hazlett was in Salem in 1782 and also in 1785. Manasseh Cutler Torrey painted portraits and miniatures. He was a pupil of Henry Inman and of the National Academy of Design in New York. He had a studio in Salem from 1831-37. Wil- liam Verstile was a Philadelphia miniature painter of some ability, who advertised in Salem, in 1802, that he was about to leave town.56
It may be gathered from such an advertisement that Mr. Verstile might have remained had there been sufficient encouragement; it was a last call. Apparently the town was not large enough to support a permanent resident. It is significant that of the forty-seven names of prominent American miniature painters listed by Theodore Bolton,57 not one is an Essex County artist.
Constant coming and going does not imply a lack of success. The vogue of profiles seems to have lasted from 1800 to 1825, after which
54. Diary of William Bentley, February 6, 1807.
55. T. Bolton : "Early American Portrait Painters in Miniature."
56. H. W. Belknap: "Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County."
57. Listed in "American Miniatures, 1730-1850," by H. B. Wehle.
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it dwindled until it slowly succumbed to the daguerreotype following the next decade. The makers of profiles passed frequently through Essex County, from which it may be assumed that they were well received. William King, self-styled physiognotrace, advertised in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1805, referring to success in Essex County as proof of his skill. He wished to take
"PROFILE LIKENESSES with his new invented patent Delineating Pencil, which for accuracy, excels any machine before invented for that puropse.
"He reduces to any size from the shadow; therefore the person is not incommoded with anything passing over the face, nor detained over six minutes. The correctness of his PRO- FILES is well known, he having taken over eight thousand in Salem, Newbury-port, and the adjoining towns.
"His price is 25c for two profiles of one person."
This was a form of portraiture which all could afford.
Profiles were commonly painted on glass, ivory, cardboard, or plaster and in oil or India ink. It is said that a mixture of pine soot and beer was used to produce an intense blackness. Sometimes the highlights were touched with gold or white; occasionally a back- ground was drawn. Rarely the profile was painted on a convex glass which cast a shadow on a white card behind, producing a softness not otherwise obtained, or, as rarely, sheets of paper were laid one above another and rounded off to provide a silhouette in relief.59
The profile was given the name silhouette by Auguste Eduart, a French artist who traveled through the country about 1825 and who inisted that the portrait should be, without added touches, all black. The name is said to be derived from Etienne de Silhouette, French finance minister, who practiced the art and who, about 1759, spon- sored economic reform for which he received public ridicule and because of which inexpensive things were said to be "a la Silhouette." The art was not limited to those professionally initiated. About 1828, a youngster, Master William Hanks, "delineated every object in nature & art with extraordinary correctness-in this department of art several young women of Salem have greatly excelled."60
58. New Hampshire "Gazette," February 26, 1805.
59. E. S. Bolton : "Silhouettes."
60. J. B. Felt : "Annals of Salem."
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The profile, or silhouette, was not always drawn. Miss Honey- well did fancy paper cutting, though she was without hands. She made portraits in Salem in 1809. William Henry Brown did a num- ber of cut-outs toward the middle of the century. He worked rapidly and took likenesses in one to five minutes.
The more prolific profile takers used mechanical devices, as may be inferred from the advertisement above. William Bache was in Salem in 1808 and 1810 and cut by mechanical means. His portraits were stamped "B's patent." Moses Chapman was born in Boxford in 1782. He used an engraved trade card during his journeys which was decorated with an example of his work; blanks were left to be filled as the circumstances of each new town might require: "Correct profile likenesses taken at Mr. - - from 8 o'clock in the morning until 9 in the evening-neatly cut for 25c-paints and shades if requested for 75c-He makes use of a machine universally allowed by the best judges to be more correct than any ever before invented."61
Who was the engraver of the card and silhouette is not known.
Engraving was done at an early date in the colonies. The "pine tree" coins already mentioned are an example. Those who were silversmiths or clockmakers were apt to be engravers as well. New- buryport seems to have been a center for the art. The Perkins family engraved there during the last of the eighteenth century, as did Jona- than Mullikan and H. Gavin; A. M. Peasley and William Hooker were there a few years later. Charles Toppan, engraver, later moved to Philadelphia and became first president of the American Bank Note Co. in 1858. James Akin was born in South Carolina, but came to Newburyport to engrave in 1804; he, too, later moved to Philadel- phia and is better known for his work there.
Engraving was occasionally done for its own sake, as in the case of a portrait, or local "prospect," but by and large it was illustrative or decorative of a text. Felt mentions C. C. Torrey, in 1820: "He engraved some likenesses, but was employed most of the time by booksellers and authors in ornamental work, scenery, historical pic- tures, charts, etc."62
Earlier, in 1807, a certificate of membership in the Salem Marine Society was ornamented with engravings of Salem Harbor, and scenes
61. Reproduced by Adele Jenny: "Early American Trade Cards."
62. J. B. Felt : "Annals of Salem."
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of fishing and launching, from drawings by Abijah Northey, Jr., of Salem. Whether or not Northey also made the engravings is uncer- tain. As he was a silversmith, the engravings are probably his.
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