Early Portraits Research Articles

Realities Not Shadows: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Early Years

REALITIES NOT SHADOWS: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Early Years Betty L. Mitchell On August 23, 1854, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Ariana Smith Walker exchanged marriage vows. This was no ordinary wedding. No happy bells rang out news of the union. The ceremony took place in a sickroom where the bride lay dying of some mysterious neurological disease which had plagued her since childhood. Eight days later, the young groom became a widower.1 "How can I ever bear to live without her?" grieved Sanborn to his friend Reverend Theodore Parker. "She has been so much to me—is so interwoven into my being that I cannot think of life without her." Who now would love him, guide him, be loved by him? Engulfed in emptiness, he poured out his need, his dependence, on the one who was forever lost. "Her influence turned the course of my life," he told Parker. "I was a boy, untrained, without self-possession or an aim— With her ... I have come to . . . manhood. Everything I have done, thought, studied has been for her and by means of her."2 Sanborn first met Ariana when he was eighteen years old—alone, in doubt, "at the parting of the ways." A tall lanky farm boy from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the fifth of seven children, Sanborn had spent most of his childhood with books as his favorite companions. Sheltered in his father's or grandfather's library, the young boy taught himself Latin, Greek, French, and German. Tales of violence, romance, and heroic adventure could transport him far beyond the narrow confines of home. By the time he was twelve, Sanborn had finished Plutarch 's Lives, the entire Old Testament, all of Sir Walter Scott's WaverIy novels, and the complete works of Lord Byron. Unfortunately, none of this prodigious reading had prepared him for any sort of career.3 A bright young man but unable to decide on a suitable vocation, Sanborn did the next best thing. He fell deeply in love with an older girl whose family had money. Ariana Walker, a petite brunette who had her own romantic notions, saw great possibilities in her shy "self1 Franklin B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston, 1909), II, 291; Franklin Sanborn to Theodore Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library. 2 Sanborn to Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library. 3 Sanborn to Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library; Sanborn, Recollections, I, 13-14, 16-17, II, pp. 255, 268-269. 101 102civil war history cultivated" suitor whose fine good looks and feminine features reminded her of "the early portrait of Raphael." Intuitively she sensed that he was "seeking, seeking, groping in the dark" after some "steady aim," some noble and "definite end," for which to "strive heartily." Sanborn thought himself independent and capable of standing alone, but Ana perceived that "in his inmost soul he would be glad of some authority to lean on and is influenced more than he is aware by those whose opinions he respects."4 Gently, almost imperceptibly, Ana Walker assumed that role of authority . "She . . . taught me what lay before me," Sanborn later remembered , "and with a friend's hand would lead me along." Ana encouraged him to put off the choice of a career until after he had developed his intellectual talents. Acting on his sweetheart's advice, Sanborn attended Phillips Exeter Academy in 1851 and entered Harvard the following year. The couple wrote each other passionate love letters in which they pledged their betrothal, but decided to keep their engagement a secret until Sanborn had established himself in the world and the differences in their social positions would not be so glaring. It was in the summer before graduation that Ana fell ill for the last time.5 The aura of tragedy that surrounded his "romantic engagement, marriage, and bereavement" earned the young scholar some fame in Boston Brahmin circles. That winter Ralph Waldo Emerson, the noted Sage of Concord, visited him at Harvard with a job offer. Would Sanborn be interested in running a small co-educational school attended by the children of the local Concord literati? For Sanborn, the...

American Tradition in Painting

What is distinctively American about American painting? In American Tradition in Painting, John McCoubrey addresses this question by focusing on essential American qualities that appear not only among the abstract expressionists but also among the earliest colonial portrait painters, who relied on vision rather than technique. Whether discussing early portraits, landscapes, nineteenth-century genre painting, the Ashcan school, or the masters of our postwar era, McCoubrey shows us-with the visual help of carefully chosen paintings-those attributes that have remained peculiar to America. In doing so, he creates a unified vision of the history of American art and the general conditions and preoccupations of our artists. Being realists, most American artists have gone to the hard reality of things as Copley first did, or as Eakins did. The unity of our art lies deeper than style. It is not to be found in what American artists say, or even in what they intentionally paint, but rather in what springs from the edge of their consciousness-no more planned than were the revelations of our nineteenth-century novelists. Its unity is contained beneath the changeable look of things. Into our new painting, its way prepared by a deliberate suppression of precise, conscious control, have come the familiar signs of American experience, to be read, as always, in the nature of the space and of the things in it, and in the unique effects of a continuing American realism.-from American Tradition in Painting

An Early Portrait: City of Fact, City of Fable

An Early Portrait: City of Fact, City of Fable

Early American Portrait

Early American Portrait

BOOK NOTICES

BOOK NOTICES Get access Early Portraits of Jesus. By KATHARINE L. RICHARDS ROCKWELL. New York: The Woman's Press, 1937. 53 pages. $.50. A. GRAHAM BALDWIN A. GRAHAM BALDWIN Phillips AcademyAndover, Mass. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume VI, Issue IV, Fall 1938, Page 232, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/VI.IV.232 Published: 01 October 1938

THE ADENOID FACIES

Adenoids apparently were not mentioned in the medical literature until 1867, when Wilhelm Meyer of Copenhagen described them, but there are many examples of the adenoid expression in early portraits. Almost all the Hapsburgs hang their mouths open as if they were afflicted with adenoids as well as with thin noses. A fine early example is the profile woodcut portrait of Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, made by Erhard Schoen at Geisberg in 1277. Another woodcut attributed to Hans Baldung Grien shows the Emperor Charles V, as a youth; he also apparently had a throat full of adenoid tissue. This portrait is used as the frontispiece to H. Gebweiler's Libertas Germaniae (Strasbourg, J. Schott, 1519). Both portraits are reproduced through the courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth

Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth

Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth

Journal Article Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth Get access Wm. Jaggard Wm. Jaggard Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume CLXII, Issue mar26, 26 March 1932, Page 229, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/CLXII.mar26.229e Published: 26 March 1932

Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth

Early portraits of Queen Elizabeth

The Remsen Memorial Collection

FORMER students in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University have organised the chemistry alumni of the University, with Dr. Harry N. Holmes, of Oberlin College, as president, and Dr. Lyman C. Newell, of Boston University, as secretary. Two meetings are held each year, ordinarily at the time of the meetings of the American Chemical Society. At the last meeting it was decided to establish a Remsen Memorial Collection, and an appeal has been issued for early portraits of Dr. Remsen, autographed letters on scientific subjects, and inscribed copies of the first, or an early, edition of his books, particularly books in a foreign language. Those who have memorabilia of this kind are requested to write to Dr. Lyman C. Newell, 688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass.

Early portraits of Benjamin Silliman

Early portraits of Benjamin Silliman

Early English Portrait Miniatures in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleugh

Early English Portrait Miniatures in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleugh

Notes on Early Portraits of John Banister, of William Harvey, and the Barber-Surgeons’ Visceral Lecture in 1581.

Notes on Early Portraits of John Banister, of William Harvey, and the Barber-Surgeons’ Visceral Lecture in 1581.

Early portrait of Mary, queen of Scots

Early portrait of Mary, queen of Scots Get access Alfred Gatty, D.D. Alfred Gatty, D.D. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-VI, Issue 147, 20 October 1888, Page 308, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-VI.147.308b Published: 20 October 1888

XIII.—Remarks on some Portraits from Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, and Wilton House

Having in the course of last autumn received permission to examine and make sketches from the vast collection of pictures at Windsor Castle, I gladly availed myself of this opportunity, to examine as thoroughly as possible the very fine and authentic series of early portraits which some of the private apartments contain.