Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 74

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

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DENTISTRY-The versatile Paul Revere, besides disturbing the peaceful slumbers of Mid- dlesex farmers on the occasion of a midnight ride "on the eighteenth of April in seventy-five," was a silversmith and occasionally practiced dentistry of the "abstraction" type. Early in the nineteenth century dentistry of the "construction" type, that is, the production and fitting of false teeth, was advertised in public newspapers. "Many a man is now alive who remembers" the beginning of modern dentistry with its engineering feats of bridge construction and plumb- ing in the marvelously contrived masticating mill which provides action in the opening chapter of digestion. The dentist has changed with the progress of dentistry ; he is now a carefully

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trained practitioner, admitted to the pursuit of his profession only after satisfactory proof of accomplishment in a school or college of dentistry and demonstration of his manual skill before a board of examiners. The development parallels three-quarters of a century of popular educa- tion emphasizing the possibility of preserving the teeth and the important part that the teeth played in the retention of good health. One of the earliest tooth powders-Calder's Dentine- was compounded and manufactured in Rhode Island. Public school programs for health educa- tion have emphasized attention to the teeth, and dental inspection is legally a part of medical inspection. Rhode Island dentists have attained distinction in their profession, as indicated by prominent activity in national organizations.

TRAINED NURSING-Another development within almost the same period has been trained nursing, which has been raised from the kindly practices of midwifery to a professional status, with the building of hospitals. The first hospital nurses were not trained when admitted; the first woman assistant of the hospital superintendent was usually designated "matron." The hospital training school for nurses served the purpose of improving internal service until extension was suggested by the discovery of a field for trained nurses outside of hospitals. All the larger hospitals in Rhode Island train nurses ; the approved preparation of the registered nurse, that is, the nurse certificated by the state board of examiners, includes service in various departments of a general hospital or in several specialized hospitals. In this work the hospitals have extended their facilities for the practical apprentice training of graduates of medical schools enrolled as internes. The service of registered nurses is part of the public health pro- gram in most Rhode Island towns and cities, whether it be supported by public appropriation or by philanthropy or both cooperatively. The medical inspection law for schools permits expenditure for school visitation by registered nurses. District nursing associations, local chap- ters of the Red Cross, religious and benevolent societies aid in supporting the work of visiting and caring for the sick and disabled at home.

THE ORGANIZATION FOR HEALTH-Besides the nurses engaged in hospitals and in public or quasi-public service, there are other registered nurses available for private nursing in homes or private hospitals, and many who serve as assistants in regular practice to doctors.

With the medical profession also are associated chemists, bacteriologists, masseurs, X-ray photographers, operators of new and complicated machines introduced as new features of manipulative, electric, ray or mechanical treatments ; manufacturers of teeth and other dental appliances ; mechanics who make artificial and prosthetic appliances, braces, crutches, shoes ; makers of new tools for operative surgeons, and the professional pharmacists who compound prescriptions. The health needs of over 650,000 people engage the services of hundreds of physicians and surgeons of various schools, dentists, nurses, attendants, mechanics and manu- facturers. If the attention to health in modern times suggests that the modern Rhode Islander is not so virile, vigorous, healthy and wholesome physically as his predecessors and ancestors, the answer is found in the conquest of contagious diseases, in the relief from epidemic and endemic. and in the longer life of the average inhabitant-increased some ten years in the last half-century.

CHAPTER XXXVII. ART AND LITERATURE IN RHODE ISLAND.

NE who would understand the glory that was Newport's in the ninetieth year from the hegira from Portsmouth must contemplate the brilliance of George Ber- keley, Dean of Derry, and appreciate his selection of Newport as the finest town on the American seaboard. Berkeley came in princely grandeur, surrounded by a train of courtiers and attendants; he postponed his departure full two years beyond the contemplated length of his sojourn, and extended the circle of his admirers among the elite of Newport. One of those who came with Berkeley was John Smibert, a distinguished painter, the first artist to seek occupation for his talent in America. He found in Newport an appreciative clientele, members of which were willing and able to pay for portraits. His pictures of Berkeley* and Jonathan Edwards have preserved for posterity the features of the great Irish and the great American preachers. In the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society the portrait of Mrs. Joseph Wanton is attributed to Smibert. To Newport came also Robert Feke, the first American artist who attained distinction, and Feke also found patronage among the brilliant society of colonial Newport. A few portraits by Feke have been preserved in the galleries of the Newport Historical Society and the Redwood Library. Others of those who were attracted to Newport included Cosmo Alexander, a Scotch painter, who would be remembered, if for no other reason, because he was the first teacher of Gilbert Stuart and took Stuart with him to Europe for further study. Yet Cosmo Alexander himself was a distinguished painter of portraits; two of his pictures, those of President James Manning and Mrs. Manning are hung in the collection in Sayles Hall at Brown University. The lure which drew colonial artists-European and American-to Newport was as certain as that which in the twentieth century attracts artists, sculptors, architects, poets, essayists, novelists, critics, musicians, actors and others who have talent, or believe they have it, to great cities and centers of culture and wealth.

STUART AND MALBONE-Two painters who achieved fame were born in Rhode Island in the eighteenth century-Gilbert Stuart and Edward G. Malbone. Each was a genius ; there was no Murillo in Rhode Island to make either a painter. Gilbert Stuart was born in Narragansett, December 3, 1755. He once located his birthplace in this way : "I was born in Narragansett, six miles from Pottawoone and ten miles from Poppasquash, and about four miles from Conanicut, and not far from the spot where the famous battle with the Pequots was fought . . . in the state of Rhode Island, between Massachusetts and Connecticut River." Elizabeth Anthony of Middletown was his mother. To Newport came Gilbert Stuart, born in Perth, Scotland. Unwisely, perhaps, but with the romantic fervor of youth, he had taken up arms in the cause of Charles Edward, the young Pretender, and after the battle of Culloden had been constrained to flee from Scotland. He married Elizabeth Anthony and took his bride with him to the house and snuffmill at the head of Pettaquamscott Pond, he as active, managing partner with Dr. Thomas Moffat of Newport. At the snuffmill, still preserved, Gilbert Stuart, Jr., was born, youngest of three children. Reverend James McSparran baptized the child in old St. Paul's Church on Palm Sunday of 1756. The Stuart family removed to Newport, and there Gilbert Stuart was a pupil in the Kay school connected with Trinity Parish. He displayed precocity in drawing, and Dr. William Hunter gave him colors and brushes. He painted a picture of two Spanish dogs, which is still preserved in Newport. At age thirteen he painted the portraits of

*At Yale University.

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Mr. and Mrs. John Bannister, which hang in the Redwood Library ; and at age sixteen a por- trait of his father. Meanwhile, in 1770, he became a student of Cosmo Alexander, and when the latter returned to Edinburgh, accompanied him. The teacher died, and Gilbert Stuart returned to Newport. He went abroad again in 1775 to study with Benjamin West, attended lectures on painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds and on anatomy by Dr. Cruickshank. While a student he painted the Duke of Northumberland and his five children, George III, king of England, and the Prince of Wales, who became George IV. John Trumbull, four of whose murals hang in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, was a student with Stuart.

Settling in London, Stuart continued to paint. His portrait of Mr. Grant, a Scotchman, skating, painted at this period, was exhibited in 1878 as the work of Gainsborough, and has also been attributed to Benjamin West. He painted portraits of Benjamin West* and of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His art was recognized, and he became one of the most popular painters in the London which knew West, Reynolds and Gainsborough. He married Charlotte Coates of Berkshire, England, in 1786, and removed in 1788 to Dublin, where his art and conviviality won him adoption by the Irish. "Oh, nobody ever painted a head as our Irish Stuart could," remarked one of his admirers. His heart longed for America, and thither he returned in 1792 to paint at Philadelphia in 1794. Stuart attained as much popularity in America as he had in London and in Dublin. He removed from Philadelphia to Washington, and thence in 1805 to Boston. He died July 27, 1828, and was buried on Boston Common in a grave which has not been identified. Washington Allston's obituary notice in the "Boston Daily Avertiser" paid eloquent tribute to Gilbert Stuart : "Stuart . . soon rose to eminence" in England ; "nor was it a slight distinction that his claims were acknowledged, even during the life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His high reputation as a portrait painter, as well in Ireland as in England, having thus introduced him to a large acquaintance among the higher classes of society, both fortune and fame attended his progress, insomuch that, had he chosen to remain in England, they would doubtless have awarded him their highest gift. But, admired and patronized as he was, he chose to return to his native country. He was impelled to this step, as he often declared, by a desire to give to Americans a faithful portrait of Washington, and thus, in some measure, to associate his own with the name of the Father of His Country. And well is his ambition justified in the sublime head he has left us; a nobler personification of wisdom and goodness, reposing in the majesty of a serene countenance, is not to be found on canvas. . . Gilbert Stuart was not only one of the first painters of his time, but must have been admitted, by all who had an oppor- tunity of knowing him, to have been, even out of his art, an extraordinary man ; one who would have found distinction easy in any other walk of life. His mind was of a strong and original cast, his perceptions as clear as they were just, and in the power of illustration he has rarely been equalled. On almost every subject, more especially on such as were connected with his art, his conversation was marked by wisdom and knowledge, while the uncommon precision and eloquence of his language seemed ever to receive an additional grace from his manner, which was that of a well-bred gentleman. . . . Gilbert Stuart was, in its widest sense, a philosopher in his art ; he thoroughly understood its principles, as his works bear witness-whether as to the harmony of color, or of lines, or of light and shadow-showing that exquisite sense of a whole which only a man of genius can realize and embody."

Stuart's admirers rank him with the great masters of portraiture of all time-with Titian, Rembrandt, Valesquez, Van Dyck and Reynolds. Stuart's best known portraits are those of George Washington, of which there are a number of originals, and a much larger number of replicas, including two full length portraits, one in the State House at Providence, and another in the new Court House at Newport. His picture of William Constable is said to be the finest portrait ever painted. By others his pictures of Judge Steven Jones and of F. S. Richardson are considered his greatest works. Besides George Washington and Martha Washington, he

*In the Ann Mary Brown Memorial at Providence.

GILBERT STUART A Sketch Drawn by the Artist Himself

BIRTHPLACE OF GILBERT STUART, NEAR SAUNDERSTOWN

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painted five other Presidents and the wives of the Presidents as follows : John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. His pictures include also John Jay, Joseph Story, and Theodore Sedgwick, of the Supreme Court of the United States ; Commodores John Barry, Bainbridge, Chauncey, Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull, Macdonough, Oliver H. Perry, and Captain James Lawrence, of the United States Navy ; Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin and Admiral Barrington, English ; Generals Dearborn, Horatio Gates, Thomas Mifflin, William Hull, Henry Knox, Henry Lee, Colonel and Mrs. Timothy Pickering and Colonel John Trumbull; Jerome Bonaparte and Madam Bonaparte, Edward Everett, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Revere, Daniel Webster, Washington Allston, Horace Binney. John Singleton Copley, Fisher Ames, John Jacob Astor, William Seton; Archbishop John Car- roll, founder of Georgetown University; Bishop Cheverus of Boston, afterward a Cardinal ; Reverend William Ellery Channing, and a long list of other distinguished men and women. His English pictures include portraits of Benjamin West, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mrs. Sid- dons, the actress. Among Rhode Islanders, mostly Newporters, painted by Gilbert Stuart were : Mr. and Mrs. John Bannister, Thomas and John Callender, Mr. and Mrs. George Calvert, Charles D'Wolf of Bristol, Mrs. Sullivan Dorr of Providence, Mr. and Mrs. George Gibbs and Colonel George Gibbs, Benjamin Lincoln Lear, the Lopez family and Isaac Touro.

Two full-length portraits of George Washington, replicas, hang, one in the state reception room in the State House at Providence, and the other in the new Court House at Newport. Both were painted by Gilbert Stuart in Philadelphia, pursuant to a resolution adopted at the February, 1800, session of the General Assembly, which was as follows : "The citizens of this state having, on all proper occasions, uniformly expressed their inviolate attachment to the person of the late General Washington, and their entire approbation of his conduct in public and private life; the General Assembly, deeply impressed with the importance of perpetuating his eminent virtues, which have shone with unrivalled lustre, and of transmitting to posterity the high estimate in which he is held by his fellow-citizens, and of giving them an opportunity of securing the likeness of the man who was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen ; and who expressed in his features the benevolence of his nature, maintained in his person the dignity of his mind ; do resolve, that two portraits of him drawn at full length by some eminent artist, with suitable frames, be procured at the expense of the State, and that one of them be placed in the Senate Chamber in each of the State Houses in the counties of Newport and Providence." Approximately 100 years later the Providence portrait was removed from the old State House in Providence to the present State House. The Newport portrait remained in the old State House there until the completion of the new Court House for New- port County. The commission for painting the portraits of Washington was given to Gilbert Stuart, who was paid $1200 for both. Both pictures maintain the benign nobility with which Stuart idealized the face of Washington; both are stately, dignified full-length portraits. The painting at Providence is considered one of the finest in existence .* Another Stuart Washington hangs in the gallery of Rhode Island School of Design. Mr. Marsden J. Perry owns a Stuart Washington which once belonged to President James Madison.

Edward Greene Malbone was born in Newport, in August, 1777. Like Gilbert Stuart, he was a precocious genius. As a lad he painted a complete landscape setting for the stage of a Newport theatre. When aged only seventeen he had established a studio in Providence as a professional portrait painter. Removing thence to Boston two years later, he tarried until 1800. He went to Charleston, South Carolina, with Washington Allston, who had studied art in his boyhood days in Newport, and who further attached himself to Rhode Island by marrying a sister of William Ellery Channing. Perhaps it was the Viking blood of the race of Malbone fighting sea captains and privateersmen from whom he was descended that sent young Malbone off on a voyage across the Atlantic to England and back again within a year in the restless

*It is not for sale. Two offers of $40,000 were rejected.

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career which was ended by death at Savannah, Georgia, May 7, 1807, in the thirtieth year of his age. In his later years his health was delicate, and he had sought relief at Bermuda and in climate less rigorous than that of New England. Malbone's finest painting is "The Hours," an allegory in which three women represent Past, Present, and Future. "The Hours" hangs in the Providence Athenaeum, for which it was purchased in 1854. Malbone's fame, however, rests upon his miniatures, which have a charm which has stood the test of time and which makes them after a century and a quarter perhaps only a little less treasured than they were by the belles whom he beautified by painting them and the beaux who were delighted to shower him with commissions to paint their ladies fair. For Malbone's art was not like the realistic record of the camera, so much as a revelation of beauty in woman. Malbone ranks with the greatest miniature painters of all times. Benjamin West praised Malbone's work for "dignity, char- acter and expression." To James Monroe, West said : "I have seen a picture by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England could excel." The Providence Athanaeum has a Malbone miniature of Nicholas Power, father of Sarah Helen Power Whitman, and others are treasured in private collections.

OTHER EARLY ARTISTS-The art tradition was established earlier in Rhode Island than anywhere else in English North America, and has been ably sustained. Washington Allston, Rhode Islander neither by birth nor by career, though educated at Newport and intimately asso- ciated with Stuart and Malbone, received his earliest instruction in painting in Newport. Sev- eral unusual portraits which hang in the Redwood Library were painted by Charles B. King, who was born in Newport in 1785, studied in London with Benjamin West, and was later well known as an artist in Philadelphia and Washington. Jane Stuart, daughter of Gilbert Stuart, made Newport her home. While much of her work consisted of faithful copying, she had inherited some of the talent of her illustrious father and painted original portraits of merit. The picture of Gilbert Stuart in the collection at Brown University was painted by Jane Stuart. Sarah Wickes Lippitt, born in Providence in 1789, studied art in Italy. The portrait of Benjamin West at Moses Brown School, a copy, was painted by Miss Lippitt. An original painting of Benjamin West, by Gilbert Stuart, is in the Ann Mary Brown Memorial in Provi- dence. Richard M. Staigg painted miniatures in Newport until the fashion changed : afterward Staigg was a successful painter of life-size portraits. His reputation rests upon his miniatures, which are rated among the best produced in America. Thomas Young of Providence painted many portraits early in the nineteenth century, among them those of Captain Thomas Cole and Doctor John M. Eddy, which hang in the gallery of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Near the Stone Bridge, on the Tiverton side of the Seaconnet River, Charles Durfee was born February 23, 1793. Self-trained and original, his pictures, several of which have been pre- served, reveal decided genius. Others among the many painters of portraits who lived and worked in Rhode Island were: C. G. Thompson, who had a studio in Providence and who was father of three children who became painters. Of these Cephas Giovanni Thompson was the most distinguished. His portraits included those of Senator Henry B. Anthony; of Sarah Helen Power Whitman, in the Providence Athenaeum ; and of Mrs. Joshua B. Chapin. Sanford Mason painted the picture of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, and Susannah Paine painted that of Catherine Williams, both of which are in the Rhode Island Historical Society gallery. Kingsley C. Gladding, Edward L. Peckham and George Harris are represented by pictures in the same collection. The old "Town House," by Harris, is noted as "A Marvel of Messionaier- like finish and accuracy." George P. A. Healy, of Rhode Island, painted King Louis Philippe of France and so pleased Louis Philippe that the latter commissioned Healy to paint the royal family. Healy's Rhode Island portraits include those of President Francis Wayland and of Henry Wheaton in the Brown University collection. The portrait of Governor John Brown Francis in the Corridor of Governors at the State House is a copy of a painting by Healy, the copy made by John Nelson Arnold. Lest the portrait of Oliver Cromwell in the Brown Uni-

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versity collection by Martin J. Heade deceive as to the latter's era, the original life picture of Bishop Thomas M. Clarke, by the same artist, will help to correct the chronology. James Sul- livan Lincoln, 1811-1888, painted nearly 4000 portraits, including several hundred "painted photographs," in a career of sixty years in Providence. The portraits of Governors Byron Dimon, Elisha Dyer (I), Thomas G. Turner, James Y. Smith and Ambrose E. Burnside, in the State House; of Mayor Bridgham and five other mayors in the Providence City Hall; of Zachariah Allen in the gallery of the Rhode Island Historical Society; and of Colonel Shaw, prized by Harvard University, were painted by Lincoln. The State House painting of Governor Lemuel H. Arnold is a copy made by Lincoln. Lincoln's picture of Charles Lippitt is pronounced "in color, modelling and expression, one of the finest heads ever painted." A contemporary of Lincoln, Mrs. Joshua B. Chapin, 1814-1890, was a painter and teacher of painting, some of whose pictures are in the gallery at Rhode Island School of Design. Mrs. Chapin was one of the earliest artists to recognize the possibilities of expression in portraiture through photog- raphy, and to lessen the monotony of the dull prints of the period by tinting them with colors.

THE HOPPINS-At Roger Williams Park a colossal bronze dog keeps silent but vigilant watch as it has for more than half a century there and at John and Benefit Streets in Provi- dence. The dog's name is "Sentinel." The sculptor of what is probably the first piece of bronze statuary cast in America was Thomas F. Hoppin, scion of a family which had produced a Gov- ernor of Rhode Island. Two other statues by Hoppin are "David Preparing to Cast the Stone," and "Hagar and Ishmael." Thomas F. Hoppin was a versatile artist in several media. In the studio which he opened in New York City after returning from study in Paris he designed the stained glass chancel window of Trinity Church, in which the Four Evangelists are depicted. He married and settled in Providence, opening a studio and continuing his life work in art. His painting, "A Battery Going into Action," is described as "a work replete with splendid movement and spirited drawing of men and horses." His etching, "Putnam Relating His Adventure with the Wolf," is an admirable expression of his fondness for illustrating Amer- ican history. These four examples of art of the finest type, each one of which reveals extra- ordinary talent and consummate mastery of technique, must suffice to indicate the contribution of this great Rhode Island artist to culture. Augustus Hoppin, brother of Thomas F. Hoppin, was a painter and illustrator, his work most familiar to Rhode Islanders being the drawings for Albert G. Greene's "Old Grimes." The poem, so quaint and original that it had an immediate vogue and maintains the reputation of a classic, was scarcely more noteworthy than the illustra- tions by Augustus Hoppin. Books illustrated by Augustus Hoppin sold for his inimitable pic- tures quite as much as for the text by the writer. Besides illustrating books, Augustus Hoppin was a writer. Augustus Hoppin deserted the Bar, for which he had been trained at Harvard Law School after graduation from Brown University, and chose the career of an artist. Two other brothers, Washington Hoppin and Cortland Hoppin, both practicing physicians, were artists by avocation. All the brothers were artists, and all had talent. The Hoppin tradition persists in the work of Colonel H. Anthony Dyer and the Colonel's daughter, Nancy Dyer, whose character drawings and caricatures recall the art of Augustus Hoppin.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 74

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716