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Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride
Art for the President's House An Historic Perspective
by Doreen Bolger & David Park Curry
During the
Lincoln Administration the portrait and history painter Francis B.
Carpenter was accorded a studio in the White
House to work on a picture of the first reading of the Emancipation
Proclamation. This political milestone was, as Lincoln told Carpenter,
"the central act of my administration, and the great event of the 19th
century." Carpenter was given complete freedom and often sat sketching
as Lincoln conducted meetings. "You need not mind him", Lincoln assured
his visitors. "He is but a painter." Carpenter worked as history
unfolded, struggling to present a recent event rather than to glorify the
distant past. "I wish to paint this picture now while they are still in the
discharge of the duties of their several high offices", he wrote. And,
like Gilbert Stuart, whose name is closely associated with that of his
best-known subject,
Washington, Carpenter strove to join his name to Lincoln's. He
wanted his rendering of Lincoln to be the
standard authority. Carpenter's First Reading of the
Emancipation Proclamation did not remain in the White House; rather
it found its way to the Capitol in 1877.
A work that captured the pathos of this historic event was William Tolman
Carleton's Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour (at
right), which depicted slaves eagerly anticipating the moment when the
proclamation would take effect. The version of this painting presented
to Lincoln by William Lloyd Garrison on behalf of a group of
abolitionists left the Executive Mansion after the President's
assassination. An earlier version of the same painting by Carleton was
acquired more than a century later. Moreover, no portraits of Lincoln
were secured for the collection until after his death, perhaps because
his contemporaries found that available portraits inadequately
represented his actual appearance and character. The poet Walt Whitman,
for one, complained:
None of the artists or pictures have caught the deep, though subtle
and indirect expression of this man's fact. There is something else
there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago
is needed.
The trauma of civil warfare shook America's growing confidence as an
international power, and a pervasive spirit of historicism governed the
collecting and decorating instincts of the next three Presidents:
Andrew Johnson,
Ulysses S. Grant, and
Rutherford B. Hayes. When Johnson moved into the White House during
the summer of 1865, the expensive plushes and brocatelles
Mary Lincoln had chosen were already shabby. Upon Lincoln's
death, ruthless collectors in search of souvenirs had carried off
silverware and china, and had vandalized furniture, drapes, and carpets.
Johnson's daughter Martha Patterson refurbished the
Blue Room, continuing the
tendency toward fashion-conscious turnover in White House decor. She
placed rococo revival furniture from the prewar
Buchanan Administration against blue wallpaper relieved by panels
bordered in black and gold. It was she who discovered in the attic the
series of presidential portraits that Healy had painted before the Civil
War. She showed them to her delighted father, who secured an
appropriation for framing them. In 1867
they were hung in the transverse hallway on the State Floor, where
Johnson enjoyed discussing the accomplishments of his predecessors with
his guests.
During Johnson's term the seed was planted for the First Lady portrait
collection.
Julia Gardner Tyler proposed to Johnson the idea of a
portrait collection of the wives of Presidents (the term "First Lady" had
not yet come into popular use). To that end, she donated
a portrait of herself, painted by Francesco Anelli in 1848, three years
after she had left the White House.
With the subsequent
Grant Administration came a return to lavish
entertainment and an ebullient redecoration of the Executive Mansion.
Enormous crystal chandeliers were hung in the
East Room, and golden
ornaments embellished a White House dressed up for the Gilded Age. The
Entrance Hall celebrated the achievements of the Republican Party,
with a color scheme of red, white, and blue carried out in flag, shield, and
eagle motifs. Two oval paintings representing the allegorical figures
Liberty and Union, by
Constantino Brumidi, were installed as ceiling
decorations. During the Grant Administration the White House was first
considered historical by visitors to the capital city. By calling at the
north door, weekdays from ten to three, visitors could view presidential
portraits beginning with Stuart's
Washington and ending with William F. Cogswell's posthumous
portrait of Lincoln, selected by Grant in 1869.
By 1876, the nation's centennial year, public fascination with American
history was growing and a colonial revival was in full swing. The
events, people, and artistic heritage of the past century assumed a
revitalized place in the present. United States history was now
considered especially worthy of study; American artifacts were deemed
suitable for collection and imitation. Symbolically as well as
stylistically, colonial and early federal motifs were adopted and adapted
by both painters and designers.
This passion for the past affected the residents of the Executive
Mansion. "I love this house for the associations that no other could have,"
exulted First Lady Lucy
Hayes in 1878, the year she acquired
Martha Washington's portrait.
Eager to commemorate the house's occupants, Mrs. Hayes consulted A.R. Spofford,
the Librarian of Congress, and decided to complete the historical collection of
presidential portraits begun by Healy before the Civil War. The very selection
of a librarian as an art adviser underscores Mrs. Hayes' desire to pursue
documentation rather than art. Spofford's attempts to acquire Stuart portraits
of John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson from their
families failed, so he soon embarked on a predictable course, commissioning
copies to fill the void left by the unavailability of original life portraits.
He first secured the services of the Boston painter Edgar Parker, an
accomplished copyist of Gilbert Stuart, to replicate portraits of Adams,
Madison, and Monroe.
President and Mrs. Hayes, whose impatience to complete the series was
known, were approached by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews, the painter of Martha
Washington's portrait and of an earlier portrait of
President Hayes. Andrews
wanted to produce impressive canvases suited to the scale of the
East Room. He undertook
full-length posthumous portraits--including images of Jefferson and
Jackson--based on careful
research. And he carried the replication process to further extremes by using
earlier portraits by other artists and even photographs as models to make not
one copy but multiple images of individual sitters. Less appealing to
20th-century eyes than the originals, such copies must be viewed in the spirit
that motivated their creation. At that time works were added to the White House
collection because of the eminence of their sitters, not the eminence of their
creators. That copies could satisfy was the result of a once commonplace
feature of artistic education. Painters routinely learned to paint by copying
the work of established artists. Imitation was encouraged until a would-be
painter demonstrated mastery over the essentials of his technique.
Mrs. Hayes did not select Andrews to paint her own image, however. When
the National Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) offered to fund a
suitable memorial to her, she settled on a portrait and made a more artistic
choice of painters. He was Daniel Huntington, then president of the National
Academy of Design and one of the most fashionable portraitists of his
generation. The likeness, presented to the White House in 1881, was hung just
as the Hayes Administration ended. After President Hayes left the White House
he followed his wife's example, selecting Huntington to execute a companion
piece. Mrs. Hayes was the first presidential wife to have her portrait painted
for the White House collection, and the Hayeses' portraits are the first
pair--President and First Lady--to enter the collection in reasonable
proximity. It is not mere chance that their large-scale and grand manner poses
beg for comparison with the more memorable Stuart Washington and its
belated companion by Andrews. The Hayeses' slightly grandiose portraits, as
well as their White House memorabilia and copious scrapbooks of clippings,
suggest that this presidential couple sought for themselves the same exalted
place in White House history that they had helped secure for George and Martha
Washington.
Mrs. Hayes, who along with her husband had agreed to ban liquor at the
White House, was widely admired, even hailed as representing "the new woman
era." The First Lady and her contemporaries, including the WCTU donors of her
portrait, seem to have endorsed the tradition begun by Julia Tyler of building
a portrait collection.
During the eight years between the Hayes Administration and that of
Benjamin Harrison, the
collection changed little beyond the addition of presidential portraits. This
was partially the result of circumstance. Shot by an assassin,
James A. Garfield died in
September 1881, only months after taking office. His successor,
Chester A. Arthur, was
preoccupied with a major redecoration of the
White House. And
Grover Cleveland so
openly disliked the lack of privacy at the White House that he used it
primarily for official functions, preferring to live in his nearby summer
retreat.
For the fine arts collection an important trend of the 1880s and 1890s
was a pronounced interest in highly fashionable decoration. The
occupants of the President's House were not immune to the American
Aesthetic movement, which had begun to stir under British inspiration
during the mid-1870s. It introduced art principles into the production
of furniture and other decorative objects; fostered collaboration among
architects, painters, and craftsmen; and placed heavy emphasis on the
artistic unity of the interior. Each piece, even a painting or a
sculpture, was integrated into a visually complex whole. While this
reform movement sought to overturn generations of borrowing from previous
styles (neoclassical, rococo, and Renaissance revivals had followed in
rapid succession), it also imaginatively reinterpreted the past, finding
a special stimulus in Oriental art.
Greater interest in the artful interior was eventually to have impact on
the White House collection, as aesthetics began to play a larger role.
Choices of paintings and sculpture made on the basis of historicism were
tempered as "art for art's sake" gained widespread popularity. Albert
Bierstadt, in general an unsuccessful promoter of his own work for the
collection, had created several aesthetic tokens, colorful butterflies, in
the White House
for the
Hayes family. Bierstadt would apply oil paints
directly to the paper to form one wing of a butterfly, then fold the
paper to produce a mirror image and complete the shape. A departure from
the portraiture that then dominated the collection, the butterflies
symbolize the decorative-interior priorities of the Aesthetic movement.
The occupants of the White House would test their aesthetic sensibilities
on interior decoration, however, long before they addressed the more
complex activity of collecting American painting and sculpture as works
of art rather than as historical documents.
Excursions into high-fashion decor stimulated a new art consciousness.
The first pieces to be gathered for the White House with an aesthetic eye
were decorative objects. Their accumulation eventually changed attitudes
toward both the collecting and display of painting and sculpture. As
early as 1860 a Japanese delegation had visited the United States
capital, presenting the White House with state gifts that included a
handsome lacquered cabinet ornamented with abstract embellishments. Two
decades later, when Louis Comfort Tiffany and his decorative firm,
Associated Artists, undertook a renovation of the White House, they were
inspired by motifs from Japan.
This up-to-the-minute aesthetic redecoration of the house was
commissioned in 1882 by
President Arthur, a sophisticated New Yorker who
was himself familiar with the extravagant domestic interiors then being
fashioned for merchant princes and captains of industry. The
Blue Room
ceiling was covered with a shield-and-star pattern, while hand-pressed
wallpaper twinkled with colored glass. The mansion's stately transverse
hall (today known as the
Cross Hall), articulated by the original marble
columns, was interrupted for the moment by a sparkling colored glass
screen designed by Louis Tiffany and described in this way for the
readers of Century Magazine:
The light coming through the partition of wrinkled stained-glass
mosaic makes a marvelously rich and gorgeous effect, falling upon the
gilded niches where stand dwarf palmetto trees, the silvery net-work of
the ceiling, and the sumptuous furniture. Indeed, the only dark tints in
the apartment are found in the portraits, which become the more
conspicuous by reason of their contrast with their brilliant setting.
The enthusiastic reporter concluded that Tiffany's changes had
"metamorphosed" the President's House, which had until that time
displayed a "hotel character."
The journalist's comment about portraits--"more conspicuous by reason of
their contrast with their brilliant setting"--is a telling one, for it
indicates that in artistic matters presidential taste was still governed by
long-established tradition.
Arthur's official portrait, predictably by the fashionable Huntington, was
dark and dignified, painted in the conservative grand manner format already
established by the patronage of the stodgier
Hayeses. The Aesthetic
movement celebrated the value of art in the home. Women collected bric-a-brac
avidly, transformed their houses with new decorative schemes, and increasingly
became amateur or professional artists and artisans. Decorative arts, such as
wood carving, china painting, and needlework, became important creative outlets
for talented women seeking socially acceptable occupation and employment.
The artistic pursuits of several
First Ladies
typify the often feminine orientation of the movement.
Mrs. Hayes had
commissioned the creation of an elaborate set of
presidential china, designed by
the artist Theodore Davis. Rather than displaying the usual emblematic eagle,
more than 400 pieces of Haviland china realistically captured American flora
and fauna. A century later a concentrated interest in American themes such as
those depicted on the china would drive the
White House's collecting of
painting and sculpture.
In the early 1890s
Caroline Harrison, wife
of President Benjamin
Harrison, conducted a series of china-painting classes in the White House
conservatory. One of her paintings, Flowering Dogwood, appears at the
right. An amateur artist, she decorated china blanks with floral motifs similar
to those she executed on paper. Interest in portraits of First Ladies now
increased as women began to play a more public role in the arts and in American
culture.
Caroline Harrison established the collection of historic china
associated with the White House and supported the addition of paintings to the
fine arts collection. Besides a portrait of her husband's predecessor,
Grover Cleveland, by the
distinguished artist Eastman Johnson, significant additions included Mrs.
Harrison's image by Daniel Huntington and two Van Buren-related works
bequeathed by a descendant of that President.
Yet contemporary art was
neglected. Albert Bierstadt had lent oils of the American West to the White
House in the hope that Congress would purchase them. The legislators
disappointed the artist, purchasing instead in 1890 a modest watercolor by
James Henry Moser. Virtually forgotten now, Moser had taught watercolor
painting to Mrs. Harrison. The Moser, a less-than-impressive substitute for one
of the Bierstadts, somewhat timidly serves as the first example of a
nonportrait purchase by the United States government for the White House. A
Bierstadt work (at right) was later added to the White House collection.
Clearly, historicism was still dominant under
President Harrison. It is
logical that he and his wife were preoccupied with history. The 23rd President
was named for his great-grandfather, who was one of Virginia's signers of the
Declaration of Independence. His grandfather
William Henry Harrison had
been President--though only for a month before he died after suffering
exhaustion and exposure to winter cold.
Caroline Harrison
undertook a detailed inventory of the contents of the
White House and carefully
surveyed those items believed to be historic, as she prepared for a renovation.
The 100th anniversary of George Washington's
inauguration was celebrated
in 1889, the year Harrison took office. Public interest focused afresh both on
the nation's highest office and on its official seat, the White House.
Discussion of an expansion of the house, in the wind during the Arthur and
Cleveland years, was
renewed. Mrs. Harrison pressed for the expansion in historic terms. Her model
was Mount Vernon, with its central block and side wings connected by
colonnades. She proposed a complex of buildings that would preserve the
original residence, yet better serve the private and public requirements of the
President. She recognized the need for an official residence, which in her own
words, "may be creditable to the Executive of the greatest nation on the
globe." Frederick D. Owen, a civil and mechanical engineer and Mrs. Harrison's
personal friend, produced a schematic drawing that reflected the First Lady's
plan. The east building was to be a public gallery for historical art. As
designed, the "public art wing" would have high ceilings and rooms that opened
into each other through spacious doorways. Mrs. Harrison saw this both as a
public gallery and as an area that could be adapted for large receptions. While
the project did not come to fruition, her suggestions for expansion prompted
future changes in the President's House. Her activities, moreover, were
important harbingers of the professional curatorial operation introduced during
the Kennedy Administration
some 70 years later.
Grover Cleveland, back in the White
House for a second term from 1893 to 1897, was preoccupied with the nation's
financial problems and his own precarious health. His young wife,
Frances Folsom
Cleveland, made some halfhearted attempts to pursue Mrs. Harrison's scheme
for expanding the White House, but those plans were abandoned after the
financial crash of 1893. Mrs. Cleveland simply rearranged paintings, including
presidential portraits, on the State Floor. During these years British painter
George F. Watts presented the White House with his painting Love and
Life, (at right) which had been exhibited to great acclaim at the World's
Columbian Exposition in Chicago and admired by President Cleveland. Its
allegorical use of the nude made it the target of groups such as the powerful
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. As a result, it was transferred to the
nearby Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1895, from whence it made brief but
controversial sorties to the White House. As Cleveland left office in 1897, in
a moment of humility decidedly uncharacteristic of Presidents, he ordered the
removal of his portrait from public view. He did not wish to impose it on
William McKinley, his
successor.
McKinley was deeply involved with international developments that led
to the Spanish-American War, and neither he nor his wife devoted much energy to
the White House or its collection. Once the war began, much of his time was
spent in the Cabinet Room, where portraits of the Presidents hung on two walls,
and where the incumbent President might seek the reassurance of history in a
time of crisis.
Art for the President's House An Historical Perspective
Early - Middle 1800's
Middle - Late 1800's
The 1900's
Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride
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