Enfilade

Attributed to Cornelius van Buskirk, Navigation Lesson, ca. 1780s–90s, watercolor and ink on paper
(Philadelphia: Independence Seaport Museum, gift of Maya Muir, 2023.010.001)

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From the press release (17 October 2023) . . .

In the late 1700s, when young boys were taught the art of navigation, it was common that they would have used a workbook to write out their examples and trigonometry equations and to explore navigational theories. An especially rare example—which includes not only these materials needed for study but also exquisitely rendered watercolor drawings of people, ships, charts, and a log from a voyage made in April 1799—was used by a boy named Cornelius van Buskirk (1776–1863). One such watercolor drawing, entitled Navigation Lesson, which had been removed from the workbook and retained by the artist’s descendent family, was recently given to the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia to complement the actual workbook previously given to the museum by a direct descendant’s widow. What makes this already important drawing and larger document all the more extraordinary is that new research conducted by ISM staff shows that the figures in the drawing are of the young artist and his tutor, who is believed to be none other than Commodore John Barry (1745–1803), the man regarded as the father of the United States Navy.

“The Independence Seaport Museum is thrilled to have been given this wonderful watercolor,” said Peter Seibert, president and CEO of ISM. “Not only is it an artistic tour de force but we are also now able to reunite it with the original manuscript copy book in our collection. Together, they tell the story of both the father of the U.S. Navy and the young man who was his student.”

The watercolor, which relates in many ways to similar genre scenes from the Federal period, is especially well drawn. It shows ‘C. Buskirk’ receiving a lesson in navigation from ‘I. Barry’ in what appears to be a parlor or study of what is likely Barry’s home. (Van Buskirk Family tradition states that ‘I. Barry’ is Commodore John Barry as ‘I’ is a classical shorthand for ‘J.’) Typical of genre scenes of the time, the room features a black-and-white painted floor, and the overall symmetry of the piece relates it to coastal New England folk artists such as Joseph H. Davis (1811–1865). Similarly, Van Buskirk paid careful attention to the face and hair of the subjects, as did Pennsylvania German artist Jacob Maentel (1763–1863). The size of the drawing (24.5 × 31.5 inches) along with its accurate artistic attention to detail is impressive. Shown against a boldly colorful, geometric background, the scientific instruments carried by the figures are precisely rendered, suggesting that the artist had more than a passing familiarity with maritime navigational tools. Both subjects are holding instruments often used in 18th-century maritime navigation: Barry holds a radial arm protractor used to measure and draft angles on paper, while Van Buskirk holds a Gunter’s scale, which was used to calculate trigonometric functions. Van Buskirk is also standing next to two globes—one terrestrial and other celestial—showcasing the interplay of the heavens and the earth in early navigation practices, which relied on positions of the stars for seafaring. Another fascinating element of the work is the inclusion of a pair of naval engagement paintings that the artist incorporated into the background. Having a painting within a larger painting is a technique used by skilled artists to showcase and show off their talents. Such elements raise the artistic level of this work from the casual to the masterpiece.

New research conducted by the Independence Seaport Museum’s curatorial and archival staff support the tradition of the artist’s descendent family of ‘Barry’ being Commodore Barry, based upon stylistic comparisons, life events, and family provenance. The darker complexion and size of the older man matches scholarly descriptions of Barry as having a ruddy complexion and a considerably slimmer figure prior to 1790. As he and his fellow officers lost their jobs and were owed back pay after Congress disbanded the Continental Navy, taking small jobs like tutoring a young boy in maritime navigation is not farfetched. Given this, Barry would have been in his 40s and Van Buskirk approximately 10 years old, an ideal age to learn navigation.

“This painting drew me in instantly when the Independence Seaport Museum received it as a donation,” said Sarah Augustine, archivist at the Independence Seaport Museum. “It is a beautiful representation of early American folk art that provides a visual story of the scholarship and mystique surrounding 18th- century maritime navigation. Since we received this donation, I have been heavily involved in researching Van Buskirk, the context of the painting, and the potential connection to Commodore John Barry. I am thrilled that the public will now get to interact with this painting, which was cherished by five generations of Van Buskirk’s descendants.”

While it was previously speculated that the entire workbook was completed together in 1799, ISM research points to the first part of the manuscript, which contains the equations and drawings, to have been made prior to the 1799 voyage as it served as a later practicum for Van Buskirk.

In 1984, the navigation workbook from which this watercolor was removed, was donated to ISM by Mrs. Schuyler Cammann. In 2023, Maya Muir, Mrs. Cammann’s daughter, donated this painting as well as another watercolor and two portraits to the museum, reuniting the book with this work of art. The painting will be on view in ISM’s forthcoming exhibition that will serve as an introduction to the museum.

If true that Van Buskirk is the artist of Navigation Lesson, it would identify a new folk artist of considerable skill and talent whose other works have yet to be identified. Research by ISM staff continues on this important and rare document.

The Independence Seaport Museum (ISM), founded in 1960 as the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, encourages visitors to discover Philadelphia’s river of history and world of connections. Stewards of Cruiser Olympia and World War II-era Submarine Becuna, ISM is home to interactive and award-winning exhibitions, one of the largest collections of historic maritime artifacts in the world and a boatbuilding workshop. Accredited by the American Association of Museums since the 1970s, it is a premier, year-round destination on the Penn’s Landing waterfront.

Johann Zoffany, The Dutton Family in the Drawing Room of Sherborne Park, Gloucestershire, ca. 1772, oil on canvas; unframed: 102 × 127 cm
(The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 2023.122). 

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From the press release (19 October 2023) . . .

Recent acquisitions by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) continue to add to the quality of the collection and to expand its depth and breadth. Visitors will soon be able to view a masterpiece by Johann Zoffany and important watercolors by Eugène Delacroix and Emma Amos.

Johann Zoffany, The Dutton Family in the Drawing Room of Sherborne Park, Gloucestershire
Conversation piece represents the culmination of Zoffany’s achievements in the genre

The Dutton Family in the Drawing Room of Sherborne Park, Gloucestershire is a masterpiece by Johann Zoffany, exemplifying the quintessentially English genre of which he was the most accomplished practitioner—the conversation piece. The Dutton family was painted around 1772, at the height of Zoffany’s career. The painting is in extraordinary condition, extensively published, has been a cornerstone of groundbreaking exhibitions, and twice achieved the record price for the artist at auction.

The CMA’s British paintings collection is distinguished primarily by great landscapes, individual portraits, and miniatures but has lacked that linchpin genre, the conversation piece. During the eighteenth century, these informal group portraits flourished among the newly wealthy middle class, for whom the genre provided the opportunity to perform the coded gestures of polite society and showcase the fashionable interiors that attested to their refinement. But the painting is also a timeless testament to that most intimate and complex network of relationships—the family. Conversation pieces give us an intimate glimpse into how British families socialized and decorated—or as importantly—how they wanted to be remembered as living.

The Dutton Family is among the final great conversation pictures remaining in private hands and represents the culmination of Zoffany’s achievements in the genre. This portrait depicts parents socializing with their son and daughter playing cards in a country house. The family is dressed in mourning following the death of a loved one. Executed with his trademark virtuosity and love of significant detail, this family portrait was so treasured by generations of Dutton heirs that it remained in the family collection for more than 150 years.

Eugène Delacroix, A Young Black Woman Fetching Water
Created in a new style consisting of bold colors and subject matter drawn from contemporary life

Eugène Delacroix, A Young Black Woman Fetching Water, 1832, graphite and watercolor on wove paper; sheet: 23 × 16 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, J. H. Wade Trust Fund, 2023.123).

Eugene Delacroix was among the most influential Romantic artists and, in the late 1820s, began to work on Orientalist images, the depiction of non-Western cultures by European artists. Young Black Woman Fetching Water presents a young Moroccan woman wearing a robe and headdress while holding a burnoose—a long, hooded cloak worn in Arab countries. She was almost certainly an enslaved African; from the Middle Ages, Morocco was a center of the international slave trade and continued to be so until the early twentieth century.

The watercolor is one of eighteen drawings that comprised the so-called ‘Mornay Album’ that the artist made during a diplomatic journey to Spain, Morocco, and Algeria in 1832 with the Count de Morney, the French ambassador to the Sultan of Morocco. Upon the completion of their travels together, Delacroix selected eighteen of his most prized watercolors and bound them in an album which he gave to de Mornay as a souvenir of their journey. These works are considered Delacroix’s greatest accomplishment in watercolor, a medium in which he was an avid and skilled practitioner. The drawings in the album were dispersed in 1877 in Mornay’s collection sale and are highly coveted today. Delacroix reconsidered the subject of these watercolor in 1834 in the celebrated painting Women of Algiers (Louvre Museum), which later modern artists from Vincent van Gogh to Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso each described as a direct inspiration for their work.

Emma Amos, The Gift
One of the African American artist’s most significant artworks

The Gift, one of the most significant works by the African American artist Emma Amos (1937–2020), comprises 48 individual watercolor portraits of women artists, writers, and curators in Amos’s community in New York in the early 1990s. The women pictured belong to different generations and are from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Some of the subjects are well-known and others are not. Regardless of their status, every sitter is treated by Amos with curiosity, care, and attention that reflects the artist’s admiration of each woman she represents.

What motivated the artist to produce this formidable account of female creativity was a desire to make vivid to her daughter, India, the value of friendship and community. She created the work as a gift for India for her twentieth birthday. Especially remarkable for the confluence of ideas and histories that it brings together, The Gift is a manifestation of intergenerational feminist community building. In its content, it documents a particular cultural milieu. And in its form, it is an arresting work of portraiture. The Gift joins signature works in other media by Amos in the CMA’s collection: the painting Sandy and Her Husband, 1973 (2018.24), and the etching and aquatint Without Feather Boa, 1965 (2021.142).

Emma Amos, The Gift, 1990–94, 48 watercolor portraits; each: 66 × 50 cm; overall: 274 × 640 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, J. H. Wade Trust Fund, 2023.126).

From the press release (23 October 2023) . . .

Suit with coat, waistcoat, and breeches, Warsaw, Poland, 1787–95, owned by Lewis Littlepage. Coat: silk, linen, silver, gold, garnets, wood, paper; waistcoat: silk, copper, linen, wool, and paper; breeches: silk, linen, iron, wood, and paper (Colonial Williamsburg, Gift of The Valentine Museum, Richmond, 2023-21,1-3).

Adding to what is already a renowned assemblage of historic dress, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has recently received a gift of nearly 330 objects from The Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia as part of the redefinition of the museum’s holdings. The collection includes gowns, coats, trousers, breeches, waistcoats, vests, petticoats, underwear, accessories, hats, children’s clothing, and more, all of which predate 1840. Within the larger group is a 20-piece collection of garments that were owned by and descended through the stepfamily of Lewis Littlepage (1762–1802). It is the largest grouping of clothing owned by a single person to come into the Foundation’s collection.

“Historic dress allows us to look closely at the physical natures of people from the past, but we often know little about their lives,” said Ronald Hurst, the Foundation’s senior vice president for education and historic resources. “The Littlepage Collection provides a glimpse into the remarkable experiences of a Virginian whose path placed him in direct contact with world leaders at the end of the 18th century.”

Lewis Littlepage (1762–1802) was a Hanover County native whose story is as colorful as the garments he wore. It is a tale of diplomacy, adventure, war, friendship, enemies, debt, and deceit. Littlepage attended what was then known as the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and later served with John Jay at the Court of Spain during the American Revolution. Due to problems with debt, he served with the Spanish Army during the attack on Minorca and the Siege of Gibraltar. By 1786 he was admitted to the Court of Poland where he served as a Chamberlain to King Stanislaw II until 1795. With war raging across Europe and the second partition of Poland, Littlepage was forced to leave the court and finally returned home in 1801. Possibly the best summary of Littlepage’s life comes from Lyon Gardiner Tyler, the president of William & Mary (as it is now called) from 1888 to 1919: “Perhaps a mere genius, Lewis Littlepage was the greatest that was ever born in Virginia. His story sounds like a fable taken from Arabian Nights. It far transcends that of Captain John Smith … his voluminous papers were nearly all destroyed by his executor, obedient to his direction. Had they been preserved, what tales of love and adventure at the Courts of Poland and Russia, and about subtle intrigues and secret conspiracies of Kings, Generals, and great diplomats, may have been disclosed.”

Waistcoat: Warsaw, Poland, 1785–95, wool, silk, wood, linen, owned by Lewis Littlepage (Colonial Williamsburg, Gift of The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, 2023-26).

When Littlepage died a bachelor in Fredericksburg, only nine months after returning from Europe, the inventory taken of his estate was fairly sparse in the way of the customary furniture, ceramics, and other saleable goods. It contained, however, a two-page, detailed list of his “cloathes [sic] and decorations,” worth $340. Aside from the typical items, such as one hat and 24 pairs of under drawers, the inventory contained objects including one green cloak given to him by the king of Poland, two coats given to him by the king of Spain, a pair of Cossack pistols, a pair of German pistols, and a Spanish sword. His small estate was left to his stepbrother Waller Holladay; the surviving objects passed directly through the Holladay family until gifted to The Valentine in 1952 by Mr. and Mrs. A. Randolph Holladay II.

Among the highlights of the collection to come to Colonial Williamsburg is a three-piece suit that, it is believed, Littlepage wore while at the Court of Catherine II of Russia. The suit—originally constructed in 1787 and comprised of a fully embroidered court coat, a single-breasted waistcoat, and matching breeches—saw continual wear as Littlepage did not become a member of the Order of Saint Stanislaus until 1790, when the badge was probably added to the breast of the coat. Made from a compound woven silk with several stripes of brown, blue, and white with a tiny blue check overtop, the coat was embroidered with a silver bullion edge with grey and white floral sprays down the center front, around and on the pocket flaps, cuffs, collar, the edge of the front pleat, and down the center back vent. The order was made on pasteboard or layers of paper, which shows inked drawings to indicate the pattern the embroiderer was to follow. The central motifs were made from a silvered disc with the royal monogram set in garnets of “SAR” (Stanislaus Augustus Rex). Around the embroidered monogram is the Latin motto “Praemiando Incitat” (Encouraged by Reward), and surrounding the phrase is a laurel wreath from which radiates an eight-pointed star worked in spangles and bullion. The matching waistcoat is embroidered with blue, white, and grey floral sprays. The borders down the center front were worked with copper bullion that is coated to make them blue. This waistcoat is made adjustable by two very large buckles attached at the back; buckles such as these are usually associated with the backs of breeches to make them adjust and are possibly a unique feature of Polish clothing. The breeches are made from a complex woven silk, lined throughout with plain off-white linen. They have a flap front that extends from side seam to side seam with five buttons at the top and two on each side. The waistband of the pocket contains two watch pockets with a button and buttonhole to close it. The back of the waistband retains its original iron buckle for adjustability. Beneath the flap there are two internal white linen pockets. Each knee closes with five buttons and buttonholes and a garter made to fit a set of knee buckles. Each of the garters are embroidered to match the rest of the suit.

“The Littlepage Collection offers a unique opportunity to study an individual’s style and how world politics affected their fashion,” said Neal Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s curator of historic dress and textiles. “It is such an amazing collection of clothing that tells an unbelievable story.”

Order of Saint Stanislaus Ribbon, Warsaw, Poland, 1790, silk, copper, enamel, glass, owned by Lewis Littlepage (Colonial Williamsburg, Gift of The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, 2023-23).

Another featured garment in this collection is a buff-colored, twilled woolen waistcoat with a tall, standing collar that Littlepage probably wore while he served as a Chamberlain and diplomat to the Court of Poland between 1785 and 1795. It is embroidered with silk threads in geometric patterns that resemble egg- and dart-like motifs. The front has two large cross or welt pockets with pocket bags made from white linen. At some point, the center back was enlarged with a wedge down its middle and the adjustable tapes were removed. The buttons and buttonhole are unusually closely spaced. Fascinatingly, found in the pocket was a piece of paper that reads “Si vous dedaignez mon vin je serais au désespoir,” (If you disdain my wine, I’ll be in despair).

In 1790, King Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland awarded Lewis Littlepage the Order of Saint Stanislaus. This ribbon is yet another highlight of the recently acquired Littlepage Collection. The sash, a red-and-white silk moiré ribbon, was worn over the shoulder with an enameled badge that hung from the bottom. The badge is in the form of a Maltese cross and is made from paste stones with red foils set behind them. It is mounted around a green-bordered, central white enamel circle showing St. Stanislaus wearing vestments with the letters “SS” to each side of him. Between each of the points of the cross, enameled Polish eagles radiate from the center. The Littlepage Collection contains two surviving ribbons, one with its badge and one with the badge missing.

For a further look at the Littlepage Collection, please visit https://emuseum.history.org/, type “Littlepage” in the search, and all of the objects can be seen in full-color images along with interpreted text for each item.