Early American

 As we continue with another visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art, we will journey across the Atlantic to the British colonies in North America.  As the American colonies become more populous and prosperous in the eighteenth century, there was a demand for art, especially for portraits.  There were no art schools, and most of the artists were self trained.

The work of some artists, such of Joseph Badger, who began his career as a Massachusetts house painter, looks a bit primitive.

Others traveled to Europe where they made a name for themselves.  Benjamin West was self-taught and specialized in portraits and historical scenes.  A wealthy Philadelphian became his patron, and West refined his technique by studying with a British painter who had immigrated to America.  His patron financed a trip for him to Italy,  There he was influenced by Renaissance masters such as Titian and Raphael.  He so admired the later, that he named his son Raphael.  

This painting of his wife and son is very similar in composition and style to a "Madonna and Child" by Raphael.

In 1763, on his way back from Italy, West stopped in Britain, and he never returned to America.  He became a sought-after painter there, and was called the "American Raphael".  He even received royal patronage.  This portrait of the colonists' nemesis, King George III, was done in 1783.

John Singleton Copley was a self-taught Bostonian painter.  He was extremely successful and was considered the most important and influential painter in colonial America.  His pictures were shown at exhibitions in London, and he gained an international reputation.  By 1774 the political and economic situation in the colonies was so precarious that he sailed to Europe for a nine month "Grand Tour".  On the dawn of the American Revolution, as the situation in Massachusetts worsened, he sent for his family to join him.  He settled in London and never returned to America.

The museum owns two excellent paintings from Copley's years in Boston.

This portrait of Anna Dummer Powell was commissioned in 1764 by her son to honor the family matriarch.  Copley finished it just two months before her death.

In 1765 Copley painted this portrait of Nathaniel Hurd, a prominent Boston silversmith.  

Next to the portrait is a silver teapot, an example of Hurd's craftsmenship.

Charles Wilson Peale was for a time a pupil of Copley's, and, after raising enough money, he traveled to England to study under Benjamin West.  Peale returned to America and settled in Philadelphia where he painted portraits of many of the leading figures of the American Revolution.  With the outbreak of the Revolution, he joined the Pennsylvania militia, served under Washington, and fought in several battles.  He did a number of portraits of Washington, including this one of the general at the Battle of Princeton.

Peale was also a scientist and naturalist.  In 1810 he opened a natural history museum, the first museum in the United States.

Perhaps the best known of the early American artists was Gilbert Stuart.  (You see one of his paintings every time you look at the picture of George Washington on the one dollar bill.)  But Stuart was a Loyalist, and when the Revolution broke out he went to England.  There he became a protégé of Benjamin West, and had a successful career as a portraitist.  His paintings commanded prices that were exceeded only by those of Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds.  The museum's "Portrait of Baron Fitzgibbon" is from his time in England.

 He returned to the United States in 1783 with the goal of painting a portrait of George Washington.  Not only did he paint several portraits of Washington, but before the artist's death in 1828, he had painted the first six Presidents of the United States.

Our look at the art of the United States will continue in the next entry from the Cleveland Museum of Art.