A Tribute to the American Limner

One of my favorite periods to study in art history is early American painting. It is fascinating to trace its development to the period right before the American Revolution (1775–1783). Early American painting developed in the late 1600s when prosperity began to emerge among the American colonists, and they naturally desired the finer things in life. The only subject in painting from the late 1600s into at least the 1770s was portraiture. Portraits were a way for people to show off their status through clothing and luxurious settings, as well as just the fact that they could afford to patronize an artist. Early painting in the American colonies was dominated by the phenomenon of the limner artist.

Attributed to Nehemia Partridge (1683–1729/1737, United States), Wyntje (Lavinia) van Vechten (1702–1752), ca. 1720. Oil on canvas, 40 ⅛" x 34 ½" (102 x 87.8 cm). © 2024 Brooklyn Museum. (BMA-563)

Most of Nehemiah Partridge’s paintings were derived from mezzotint (print) copies of paintings by late Renaissance and early Baroque British artists. The result is a certain stiffness of pose, a naïve treatment of surfaces (such as the omnipresent highlight lines on the crest of folds in the clothing), and the rather frozen, self-conscious facial features. This portrait of an affluent young Dutch woman, Wyntje (Lavinia) van Vechten, with its failed attempt at a casually elegant pose, reveals traits common to all portraiture of the time. This includes the vague landscape background and the sitter with objects that symbolize her character. The two roses symbolize the young woman's purity and innocence, while the ripe peach is a symbol of good health. This may indicate that the portrait was either a betrothal piece or celebrated the young woman's wedding.

Because there were no art academies in the American colonies, most colonial painters were self-taught. There was no possibility of training in technique and anatomy in America. Some American artists traveled to England to observe English painters. The Early Colonial style, based largely on prints of English portraits, tended to be flat, evenly lit, and rich in realistic detail. Early portraits are characterized by unsophisticated drawing, awkward rendering of anatomy, and emphasis on the luxury items of the sitter.

Beginning early in the 1700s, the predominance of the naïve portrait style began to decline with the arrival of artists from England, who brought with them the English Rococo style. As the century wore on, prominent American-born artists absorbed the style and made it uniquely American with an emphasis on observed realism.     

Despite the overwhelming influence of European, mostly English, styles in art during the 1700s and first half of the 1800s, the tradition of the itinerant (moving from town to town), self-trained artist continued. Known as limners these traveling artists found a good source of patronage in less-affluent Americans, who nonetheless wanted to demonstrate their refinement and good taste by commissioning art. The word limner derives from a Medieval mispronunciation of the term illuminator, an illustrator of manuscripts.

In the early 1700s, several limners were active in the Hudson Valley from New York City to Albany. They painted portraits of the wealthy patroon (landowner) families, and have come to be called Patroon Painters. Pockets of rural, self-taught artists persisted through the 1800s in the form of segregated religious or utopian communities, isolated frontier regions, and newly settled regions in the West. The thriving tradition of the limner painter was a feature of American painting that endured well into the 1800s. 

Partridge was one of five children of Colonel William Partridge (ca. 1652–1728) and Mary Brown (1660–1739), who were married in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1680. Nehemiah and his siblings were all born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Nehemiah was in Boston by 1712, working as furniture painter known as a japanner, a fashionable style at the time that imitated Japanese lacquer decoration. His advertisements specified wholesale and retail sales of all sorts of paints and oils. He worked in Boston into 1714, and was in New York City in 1718, beginning his profession as limner. He is also recorded that same year in New York as the former master of an apprentice, James Smith. In 1722, he is believed to have painted portraits in Jamestown, Virginia. Returning to Boston, he died there sometime between 1729 and 1737.

Unknown Artist, Portrait of Pierre van Cortland, ca. 1731. Oil on canvas, 56 ⅝" x 41 ⅜" (144 x 105 cm). © 2024 Brooklyn Museum. (BMA-321)

In 1665, New Netherland (New York) ceased to exist when the director-general, Peter Stuyvesant (ca. 1610–1672), was forced to hand over control to the British. However, the Dutch heritage of New York persisted artistically well into the 1800s. Though that may be the case, far fewer portraits survive from the 1600s in New Netherland than New England. This is surprising due to the rich artistic heritage in Holland and Flanders that permeated all levels of society.

Although there were guild-trained Dutch artists living in New York, most colonial artists of Dutch descent were self-trained. Like their British counterparts, they drew inspiration from prints of portraits by English, Flemish, and Dutch Baroque artists.

This portrait of Pierre van Cortland clearly draws from the Baroque style. In the tradition of European portraits, the boy is shown surrounded by the trappings of a life of affluence. The naively rendered background landscape reflects the style of painted overmantels from the colonial period, the first landscapes in American painting.

Ralph Earl (1751–1801, United States), Portrait of Colonel William Taylor (1764–1841), 1790. Oil on canvas, 48 ¾" x 38" (123.8 x 96.5 cm). Image © 2024 Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York. (AK-233)

This portrait of William Taylor of New Milford, Connecticut, has all the hallmarks of late-1700s British portraiture: three-quarter view of the figure, softly idealized features, and a verdant make-believe landscape in the background. The landscape, viewed through a window painted in an interesting angle, alludes to the sitter's comfortable "country squire" life, while the sketch of a landscape indicates that the sitter was an accomplished artist. Although the furnishings do not imply great wealth, the fact that the sitter preferred to be shown as an artist indicates that he was a man of leisure.

Artist Ralph Earl was born in Worcester County, Massachusetts, and he was presumably a self-trained painter. His earliest known works were created in New Haven, Connecticut, where he produced four drawings of the battlefields of Lexington and Concord in 1775, which were engraved by Amos Doolittle (1754–1832). Ironically, Earl was a supporter of the British and his battlefield prints were used as revolutionary propaganda. Few pre-Revolution portraits by Earl remain, but his style is very much in keeping with the American self-taught limner tradition in style. Fearing for his safety, he left the United States for Britain in 1778 and only returned in 1786.

While in England, Earl executed many portraits for the rural landed gentry. He received advice in painting from the mentor of American expatriate artists, Benjamin West (1738–1820). When Earl returned to America, his painting style was more supple and well modeled but still had the limner stiffness to some of it. When an attempt to establish a studio in New York failed, Earl tried Boston, and, failing that, became an itinerant painter first in the Connecticut River valley, then into Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Ammi Phillips (1788–1865, United States), Joseph Slade (ca. 1765–1849), 1816. Oil on canvas, 40 ⅛" x 33" (102 x 84 cm). Image © 2024 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (NGA-P0652)

Like most of the portraits Ammi Phillips produced, the sitter, Joseph Slade, is depicted against a neutral, blank background in this painting. Phillips’s grasp on anatomy was somewhat spotty, particularly in this gentleman's dislocated-looking shoulder and large, out-of-proportion hands. Perhaps the hands—like the book the sitter holds, Temple of Nature—were meant to emphasize whatever Slade's profession was. Temple of Nature was a book written by British physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802, grandfather of Charles Darwin), which espoused the ancient Greek theory that Nature had creative powers. It alludes to Slade’s status as a student of Enlightenment philosophy.

Phillips was also sketchy in his ability to portray ambient light. Like most self-trained artists, he delighted in details of costume, which he painted quite well, but his depiction of luxurious fabrics is awkward and looks metallic rather than soft. Phillips’s strength was in his ability to capture the sitter's likeness quite competently and sympathetically. There was little or no effort at endowing his portrait with personality as limner artists simply recorded the appearance of the sitter for posterity.

A prolific, rural self-taught artist, Phillips worked in western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Hudson River valley. His earliest works date to about 1810 and spanned a career of about 50 years. He may have been aware of the popular Albany portrait painter Ezra Ames (1768–1836), but the Albany artist's style had little or no impact on Phillips’s simple, elegant style.

Correlations to Davis programs: Explorations in Art Kindergarten 2E: 9.3; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 1: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 2: 2.1, 2.2; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 3: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 4: 2.1; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 5: 1.1, 1.2; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 6: 6.1, 6.2; Experience Art: 1.1, 7.1, 7.4; A Personal Journey 2E: 3.2, 6.4; A Community Connection 2E: 2.1, 2.3; Discovering Drawing 3E: chapter 7