 Hello, everyone. Welcome. Welcome. This is the beginning of our fall series first lecture. Hope you all had a wonderful summer. A couple things I wanted to mention this fall, our series is being produced by CCTV and we are very, very excited. Relationship with them. As I'm sure you know they count a lot on community support. So I would love to have you look at the email we sent out to you yesterday. If in case you would like to support them. I know they would appreciate it. The video from today's lecture will be aired next Thursday at two o'clock. And again, our information we sent out to you yesterday tells you how you can view it. If you miss a lecture you can watch it or if you just want to see it again. What I want to mention is we do want you to ask questions, and you'll see on your screen if you tap it there'll be a Q&A button. So you can ask questions to type in anytime during the lecture or even during the Q&A period which should start around quarter of three. So, good luck. And to now, call on Beth Wood, our program chair to please introduce today's speaker. Beth. Hello everyone and welcome to our fall lecture series. We plan what we think is a really diverse range of topics and speakers for you this fall. And we hope that you will find them thought provoking as Carol mentioned, we hope that you'll ask questions of our speakers and you can enter your questions anytime during the lecture or during the Q&A. It's a great pleasure to welcome back our speaker today, Tom Denenberg. If you were with us when Tom gave some of his previous lectures when we've been in person before the pandemic, you'll know that we have a real treat in store today. And Tom has been the director of the Shelburne Museum since 2011. Prior to that he was the deputy director and chief curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. He earned his bachelor's in history at Bates College, his master's and PhD in American studies at Boston University, and he's also held fellowships at the Smithsonian and winter tour. He frequently writes and speaks on New England culture and history, which he's here to do for us today. And it's a great pleasure so please join me in welcoming back Tom Denenberg. Thank you Beth and thank you Carol. Can you hear me, everyone's, you got me good wonderful thank you I'm always a pleasure to be here with you I'm sorry we can't be in person but hopefully we get back together. Next time we can, we can all have a three dimensional experience with each other rather than just the zoom. This is a fun, a fun talk today. I called it Lost and Found, it's about a new painting at Shelburne Museum by John Singleton Copley and I want to tell kind of an insider story, if you will, about how we acquired this painting and how it came to be because it's kind of a fun, fun tale and then we'll get into that get into the Copley and some of the implications or ramifications from the portrait itself this afternoon for a little bit. The story starts, like all good stories on a dark and stormy night. So this was back in December on the 11th actually a couple of days before I'm sorry probably the seventh or eighth of December. And one of our former trustees at Shelburne Museum called me and asked if I would look at a Sotheby's catalog an online auction catalog that was coming up. He was interested in the painting was a Leon Kroll painting so a modernist painter from the 1920s, 20s or 30s and so I started paging through online this catalog and again it was about 839 o'clock at night I think it was a Monday or Tuesday night and the auction was on, on that Friday. And, and I was looking at all of these 20th century artists, wonderful artists. I'm John Marron Charles Schiehler, Charles Birchfield Milton Avery, Prendergas, Maurice Pendergas, Marston Hartley, kind of a who's who of 20th century on painting. And I'm going to share my screen now with you. I see oh the host has disabled participant screen sharing I wonder if Jordan if you can let me back or Kevin, let me share the screen. I'd like to share a slide with you if you can. Here we go great. So here's our first slide. So amongst the all those modernist painters there were I think there were 7476 lots in the, in the auction amongst all of those modernist painters is 20th, 20th century painters there were maybe four or five 19th century paintings in the auction and then there was one 18th century painting, and it was this, John Singleton Copley portrait of mercy green leaf green leaf Scali from 1763 in her wonderful original frame or her coply frame. And, and it kind of caught my attention. I many many years ago had taught architectural history in Boston. And so Scali was of course a name that loomed large, and we'll come back to you know talking about that for a few moments. But then more recently, Scali was a very familiar name to me at Shelburne Museum so it immediately caught my attention, even though it was late at night and I wasn't supposed to be looking at this painting. And I, I read the catalog blurb that Sotheby's have proposed for the painting in the, in the auction catalog and it talked about how it descended in the family and who she was and how this related to copies, you know body of work that we know. And then it got down to a little further in the description and it said pendant portrait, which means paired portrait to the portrait of John Scali by John Singleton Copley 1763 so we knew it was a pair. And then in parentheses and here's the kind of the punchline, whereabouts unknown. I'm going to clean back in the chair actually this is very chair that I'm in I said whereabouts unknown that's that's kind of funny because of course we know exactly where John Scali is he's been at Shelburne Museum since 1959. So we already own the pendant portrait we already own the husband or John Scali. Those opportunities and this of course is electro have more web the founder of Shelburne Museum in just before she passed away 1960 with that painting and she considered this to be perhaps her greatest acquisition this was one of her favorite favorite American paintings. Now, started to say this a moment ago but you know that the opportunity to reunite a pair of portraits. I think has come along maybe twice in my 25 years or so of doing this, and certainly never a John Singleton Copley portrait so I called our curators and some of our staff and then I called our trustees because we have a collection committee that acquisitions and I, you know, kind of pitched this step on saying you know I know this is probably the worst time in the history of the museum to be proposing the acquisition of a painting but I don't see how we can let this go by us without serious serious consideration so we got the approval of the of the board of trustees and and we went after the painting. Now, the reason I wanted that painting the reason we went after the painting is, it fits a number of kind of holes if you will or fills lacunas in the American paintings collection of Shelburne Museum, and I want to talk about that a little bit. I know you're all familiar with Shelburne Museum, founded in 1947 by Electra Avamir web to be what she called the educational project varied and alive where she moved all these buildings from upstate New York and Vermont onto the grounds of our museum. And I know you're all somewhat familiar with the story of Electra Avamir web we've talked about this with with this group. Before, but Electra web of course on the left is a little girl in the lap of her mother. I'm in this wonderful Mary Cassatt pastel which I think is kind of the ground zero if you will for understanding Shelburne Museum it's kind of the text for understanding Shelburne Museum. Because of course, Louisiana have a Meyer was a great collector of French impressionism and she and her husband were grand friends of Mary Cassatt and they traveled to Paris in the 1870s and bought impressionist paintings right out of the artist studio, creating the collection still actually still the collection of record of French impressionism in America at the Metropolitan Museum of art. Every generation as we know, those of us who either have kids or our kids. Every generation knows that we tend to reject the aesthetic and interest of our parents and go our own way and of course, young electorate did just that by not becoming interested in impressionism or old masters, but collecting American art in our corner, rather famously as a teenage girl bringing home, what we used to call a cigar store Indian or a tobacco store sign. I'm presenting it to her mother, her mother looked at her and said oh Electra what have you done. So this idea that even just collecting American material culture or antiques or decorative arts was somehow. It was appropriate in the family she grew up in so we have a young girl on the left who grew up to found Shelburne Museum and of course as we all know Shelburne Museum is a series of these immersive experiences with objects, both fine art and objects from the 18th to 19th century. Electra web was one of the three or four women in the 1920s or 30s who really defined what we eventually came to call folk art so gathering up a great number of these band boxes wallpaper boxes on the left and weather veins and their decoys and creating the museum by the mid 1950s that we all know and love today which is Shelburne Museum. Relatively late in her life so beginning in 1956 or 57 she begins to buy American paintings. She had the same sort of interest in seriality and multiplicity of objects she doesn't buy one of anything if she's interested in artists she goes very deep. So we end up with multiples by George Dury multiples by Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson he and others. He buys these paintings in tranches from collectors, most famously from Max and Carolic, who's a wonderful story unto himself someday maybe we should do a lecture just on Max and Carolic. He was a Russian opera singer who came to America and married a member of the codfish aristocracy in Boston woman in Martha Codman and using her money, put together a series of collections of American paintings, rather famously. The three collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston they're often referred to as Carolic one two and three, and their paintings and watercolors and it forms the core of the American wing at the MFA Boston. But Carolic also had an eye for these plain paintings or these eventually came to call folk portraits. And amongst the most important that he owned were this pair by Nancy Lawson and her husband by William Matthew Pryor 1843 from Boston, I believe these are one of just a handful of sign portraits of African American sitters that we know. And so Electra Web bought these along with something like 108 or 110 other paintings from Max and Carolic so she would tend to buy these things and paintings these things in great number. So these paintings came in with one of those one of those important collections from from Maxim Carolic and Electra Web wrote something of a manifesto in, in this time period where she said that, you know, one should hang work of untrained artists so as a prior as a kind of a folk artist along with those who had some artistic training or fine arts so she had this very ahead the curve of on guard sense that to understand American visual culture, the history of American art you needed to have a fairly broad representation. So works by Willie Matthew Pryor, and someone like John Singleton Copley, who we'll get back to in just a few moments. So let's say 1956 and her death in the fall of 1960. Electra Web purchased almost 540 American paintings. I mentioned before a number of these Fitz Henry lanes that she bought this is Boston Harbor from merchant men in Boston Harbor from 1863. I think we eventually came to own, I think it their 10 lanes at Shelburne Museum. Some of these directly purchased by Electra Web others by family members who were collecting somewhat in harmony with their mother or on to 10 then eventually gave the paintings to us but it gives the museum, you know, kind of unique depth he sort of pools or pockets of depth with certain certain artists. And I of course pulled this because it's Boston and we're going to come back to talking about Boston a minute so I wanted to stay on theme. And I also pulled the Lawson's because they lived in Boston and we're going to come back to that in a few moments as well so we have a little bit of a theme developing within the American painting collection. So there was a pair of Boston merchants from 1843 and William Lawson on the right was in the in the second hand clothing trade but mostly selling to sailors so it was in the sort of maritime economy of 19th century Boston lane of course documenting that economy just a little bit later in 1863. So amongst all the other paintings at the museum, there's also this other wonderful portrait, actually self portrait by John Frederick Pito from 1887. And I say this is a self portrait because we know that Pito played in a band the town band in New Jersey and was an artist. And so the palette and the horn there I think our self referential symbols to Pito. And so this sort of sense that electro web is putting together a kind of a canonical and self referential collection of American paintings is really quite important to our understanding of what she then did next when she purchased a series of more important or or paintings that were more sort of easily recognizable within the history of American art. And I would argue that that painting that she liked best and had her portrait taken with herself so again this is kind of more of that theme of, you know, portrait of the artist and then, you know, the artistic sort of production of that artist. Probably the most important painting she had was that portrait of John Scali by john singleton coffee. This is of course a self portrait so another self portrait of john singleton copy. The sadly isn't in our collection but it's in the National portrait gallery down in Washington DC, and this is from 1783. But what I would like to do is just dwell for a moment on john singleton copy for a few minutes. So he was born in 1738 and he dies in 1815. So I would like to do who are beer drinkers or who still use cash, and have, have us currency in your pocket probably recognized john singleton copy was really the individual who created the pantheon of revolutionary leaders. So this is our kind of visual sensibility of who created the ruckus that led to our separation from Great Britain. You know the images we have of those figures, those revolutionary leaders are all courtesy of john singleton copy now copy himself had a kind of awkward and uneasy relationship to those individuals and even to the kind of turmoil of his day. And, and we'll talk about that in just a few moments. So John singleton copy himself had particularly unlikely origins or beginnings for the famous artist that he became. This is Paul reviewers view of the town of Boston from 1768 and you see the British troops are unloading British soldiers British army soldiers. Again gives us a little sort of background flavor for the, the adult world of john singleton copy in Boston that we have troops coming from the mother mother ship, the mother country to make sure that these sort of revolutionary merchants are not going to get out of hand in the 1760s. What's so unusual and as I mentioned company had an unusual upbringing is that his mother, he was, his mother was widowed when he was a quite young toddler, and his mother ran a tobacco shop I don't know if you can see my cursor but it was down here at the foot of the floor in Boston, and and Copley probably would have grown up in a kind of, you know, middling workman like circumstance and he probably would have taken over his mother's tobacco shop and been a kind of minor merchant in Boston, had she not then married a fellow named Peter Pelham. Who became his stepfather was born in 1697 and dies in 1751. And what's so very, very interesting about Peter Pelham is he's a dealer in Mesotens. So these are prints that would have been produced in England in London, and then traveled to Boston and then would have been selling them at in a print shop but then he also develops his own skill set as a printmaker. And so he begins to produce Mesotens which are sent back to England so so Pelham is really one of these individuals who's engaged in this kind of transatlantic rim international economy of trading images. So if you think about a day, not so long ago where we didn't have websites and we worked all on zoom together and then you roll back the screen a little bit farther and we didn't have television and you roll back the screen before let's say 1839 and we didn't have photography, really the way that you would understand what someone looked like, or how they would present themselves or comport themselves or their posture and their clothing and all the ways that you would sort of represent yourself in public was basically due to these Mesotens or the very occasional oil painting that if you had money enough you might come across so very few people would have been able to afford oil paintings on the eve of the revolution only the elite would have had them and only a handful of people beyond that circle would have seen those paintings. And so if they were coming into your parlor to do business with you, more likely that you would have seen a mesotent or print like this and so this is a Peter Pelham of cotton math or the great 17th, 18th century divine Pearson leader. And so this is really the point of inflection for us in the story, which is John Singleton Copley literally learned how to draw and paint at the knee of his stepfather. Now, it's always a little hard and when I was in graduate school. You know, we were taught not to talk about things like genius. You know, we were talking taught to, you know, describe things and come up with a theory about how, you know, how history happens. And it's also clear to me that there are some individuals who do have some sort of inner inner talent or inner light and I think we can say that John Singleton Copley who came from, you know, these fairly unlikely beginnings sprung forth into this kind of role in history, which catches me at least by surprise and I suspect all of you as well. This is Copley's portrait boy with a flying squirrel from 1765. On one hand it's a portrait. And this is his stepbrother. Henry Pelham so Peter Pelham and his mother's child. Stepbrother half brother. But on the other hand, it's a very, very self conscious painting and very sort of mannered, because Copley actually paints his, his half brother, much younger than he was when this painting was was committed to canvas. And then he also uses a series of these very telling symbolic objects and even fort fauna, if you will, in the case of the flying squirrel in this room. The first thing that always principally grabs me is the mahogany table that young Pelham Henry Pelham is leaning on because mahogany would have been a very, very telling choice. And then on the point of Copley mahogany of course south or Central American would trans shipped through Cuba before it got to Boston is a real clear signifier of the status of the family. But then the flying squirrel so interesting because it was indigenous to North America. And that's telling because Copley always intended to send this painting to England. It was crated up and shipped off to London. In a ship owned by a friend of the copies family or Pelham's family, where it was displayed in London and this is where Copley began to develop his reputation as really the principal portrait painter in Boston now there were other portrait painters. Just before Copley Joseph Blackburn before that, Robert freak. Excuse me, but this portrait of Henry Pelham the half brother really is what kind of breaks Copley out as the leading, the leading image maker, if you will, in Boston on the eve of the Revolution. The fact that Copley is sending the painting to London the fact that he's seeking a larger stage or a larger reputation should really give us a clue that that he has sort of aspirations, we also can see that pretty clearly when he marries into the Clark family so Suki Clark is becomes John Singleton Copley's wife in 1769 and this opens up tremendous economic opportunity for John Singleton Copley. Again, if you follow my cursor Copley in his self portrait down here grew up at the foot of the wharf long wharf in the tobacco shop by the time he marries Suki Clark. He's gone all the way up the hill here to the top near Boston Common and he is adjacent to land owned by John Hancock. So literally the kind of the social mobility of John Singleton Copley has everything to do with marrying into the Clark family. This, the Bonner map of Boston I think is one of the great documents of colonial America. So many figures are identified their land that they own and the neighborhoods and you really see Boston, as it was on the during the Revolution and before obviously the back bay in the middle pond and everything are filled in during the 19th century so it gives you a real clear sense of the social topography in which Copley, Copley lived. Now, we mentioned before, and Copley painted all of the great revolutionary heroes. Sam Adams, John Hancock anyone we can really think of. I'm particularly interested in these pendant portraits these paired portraits that he became known for. These are Elizabeth and Ezekiel gold weight. They were painted just a little bit later than the scullies so this was 1771 these are in the collection of the MFA. Not only do I like them because they're sort of the Cadillac versions of copies. They're larger than the ones we have at Shelburne Museum that the sort of dress that Mrs gold tweed is wearing is a little more finely executed the bowl of fruit would have taken time for Copley to paint, but I like the fact that you see that on the table again and I like the fact that you see with Ezekiel gold weight there on the right the very plain affect or plain way in which he represented he was represented to the public that would have seen this portrait whereas his wife is literally clothed in silks and lace and a much more elaborate, elaborate affair. The other reason I like this portrait so very much of this pair of portraits is the bill is extent so at the collection of the MFA Boston. We actually have the bill to Ezekiel gold weight 1771 to his ladies portrait and you have the amount there. And then you have to his own portrait and then to the car gold frames and then to a black frame so that's sort of a simple Dutch looking frame. So you can see the differential between what the what the cost of the gilded car frame was. So we have a sense that this was a significant amount of money to put down to have your portrait painted so only the wealthiest merchants in Boston would have had their portrait painting and only the sort of wealthiest of the wealthiest sort of afforded dependence, which I think is so very interesting the dual portraits. The other thing that I like so much about john singleton coplete and his story is, there's this kind of perspective or point of view that we tend to have as historians and even as students and you know those of us with casual in the past where we're kind of looking back at these paintings and this is john scully our painting on the right. And you know we tend to think of them as cast and amber or or of a moment, and somehow, you know, immutable. And what I tend to like to think about is how dynamic these portraits were in their, in their day, and the fact that they were part of a broader visual culture. And one way of understanding this is to notice that Copley also produced pastel portraits of both john and mercy scully, and surprisingly, I don't know very many other opportunities maybe just our portraits where we can line up the pastel portraits with the, with the oil paintings. Now, again I mentioned that this is a dynamic process in the time period of culture, you know today if we think of a pastel and compare it to an oil painting we would probably compare value to the oil painting takes a little more time to produce materials are a little more expensive perhaps the pastel but in copies era, the pastel would have been the most up to date and sort of she she way of creating that portrait. I think because it's a little more ephemeral it's a little more delicate, I'm getting the materials was more difficult to produce. The number of letters extent in archives that show the, the lengths that Copley went to actually get his hand on on on pastel materials he had to get the pastels themselves from Switzerland so I like the fact that we have both john scully in pastel and I also like the fact that we tend to think of sketching charcoal pastel, even watercolor as a preparatory form of artistic production like you would do the sketch or the pastel before the oil painting. But in fact, if you look at the dates you'll realize the pastel came after. So it was sort of a copy of the painting, and a very up to date way of representing john scully the copy was commissioned. And again I mentioned we have mercy as well. So that's very very unusual. She's in the collection of Harvard University, and then john scully who we saw there a moment ago was in the collection the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Also just kind of talking a little bit marinating for a little bit in this this moment. So these are the pendant portraits. You know they're 275 known copies extent copies, and I'm sure there were more painted that didn't survive the kind of vicissitudes of time and history. But they're only a handful I think it's, you know, 24 something like that pendant portraits. There are only 58 known pastels by john singleton copies so that they're, they're really quite quite rare so the fact that we can line these up with our is really sort of wonderful. This is the moment you've been waiting for I think, which is where we actually reunite john scully and mercy scully for the first time I think since the 1920s. What's so very interesting to me now and I want to talk about this is kind of what happens. When we reunite them and let's talk a little bit about what happens when they met for the first time so mercy scully was born in 1719 and dies in 1793 her husband on the left was born in 1712 and dies in 1790. John scully was the chair of the Boston select board from 1764 until really his death in 1790. He's chair from 1774 until his death. He was on the select board he was the fire warden for Boston he was a major, major merchant mercy green leaf scully you might mention or might notice, recognize the name green leaf and that's going to be important in a few moments came from a merchant family as well john scully was a merchant. And it's worth dwelling for a minute just on these relationships that so many of these Boston families were married to each other. And that created a great deal of complications or live next to each other and that created a great deal of complications as we move past 1774 1775 1776. I already introduced you very briefly to Suki. Copley Suki Clark Copley Suki's father was a merchant. Very involved in trade with England. And this is where things get very very interesting because Suki's father owned the tea. He was thrown overboard in the tea party. So John singleton Copley had very close economic relationships with his Tory in laws. And so as we move closer and closer to the outbreak of hostilities. Life is getting increasingly difficult for John singleton Copley his wife Suki leaves for England with the children and then he eventually leaves for England as well on the eve of the Revolution. So this Boston fundamentally in the hands of these revolutionaries like john scully you see here on the left who was a stalwart politician and you know member of the Boston select board throughout the Revolution, and then the British soldiers. So contesting the landscape that we saw a few moments ago in the in the boner mark. I mentioned a couple of names, green leaf. And, and then another one that comes up, Thomas Melville. So of this relationship between, excuse me, john scully mercy scully, we have five children. Mercy Junior, who you see here. And this is another portrait by john singleton Copley this is in the collection of the terror foundation which is at the Art Institute Chicago. This is from 1764 mercy junior was born in 1741 dies in 1826 and she was the the fiance of Dr. Joseph Warren, who dies at the battle of bunker hill. And so then does not leave airs dies without having kids in the, I believe she died in 1826, but does not have children. Another son, also john scully develops scully square, which we'll talk about in a few moments, another daughter Priscilla, Mary's Thomas Melville Thomas Melville dressed up as a Mohawk Indian, and through john singleton he brought up his father-in-law's tea into Boston Harbor so I hope I'm conveying somewhat of the complexities of these personal and professional relationships. And then Thomas Melville and Priscilla scully Melville of course became the parents of one Herman Melville that obscure writer of C fiction who brought us Moby Dick in the 19th century. John and mercy scully beget Priscilla who beget Herman Melville. And then the other john scully of course develops the family property repeatedly in the 19th century so it eventually becomes the scully square that some of us can perhaps remember but others now as being fundamentally under government center in Boston today. I'm really quite fond of this scene from the 1940s I think this is just right before World War two because it kind of shows that the CD end of scully square as we know it as a vaudeville series of vaudeville series before the 1950s and 60s where it's really declared an eyesore and we get the urban renewal which brought us the great kind of brutalist city hall in Boston. A lot of interesting as a sidebar a lot of interesting technology came out of scully square. Just above that sign there on the left, one of the theaters there was a Garrick space, where a fellow named Alexander Graham bell was experimenting with telephone trying to come up with ways of amplifying the sound in these burlesque leaders vaudeville theaters, and instead he developed the telephone in scully square so all sorts of interesting bits of history come in and out of scully scully square. So, one last thought and I'm going to begin to bring us toward a conclusion now and then we can we can do some q amp a and talk a little bit about this. One last thought, as to why I thought it was appropriate for Shelburne Museum to purchase that portrait of mercy scully and reunite her with her husband is because we were already stewards of these portraits. As you know, Shelburne Museum, prior to the pandemic was on the, you know, the must do circuit for every school child in in Vermont. One of my favorite statistics about Shelburne Museum is there about 80,000 82,000 school age children in Vermont, and about 10,000 of them, not quite 10,000 of them come to Shelburne Museum every year. Over 10% of the of the school age population of Vermont comes to Shelburne Museum and one of the most important things I think we can do is stand them in front of these portraits and talk a little bit about who was Nancy Lawson, who was William Lawson, what was their relationship with William Matthew prior the painter. I want to dwell on that for just one moment because William Matthew prior was from what was then the district of Maine so part of Massachusetts grew up outside of Bath. And he was in the part of Maine sort of one or two towns over from a free African American Nancy Lawson that you see on the left. And interestingly enough they went to the same church. Unfortunately, they both ended up in Boston, we Matthew prior painting in Boston, Nancy Lawson and her then husband William living in Boston so there's some close connection between William Matthew prior and Nancy Lawson probably prior to the marriage when Lawson and prior work in the district of Maine. But what's so very important to me. And I hope really a you know an object lesson to all of us today in society right now was the fact that William Matthew prior as I mentioned signed his name to the front of these paintings and you'll see the cursor there. Because that was a very, very rare thing and brave thing for him to do he's basically declaring himself an ally of these African American sitters African American middle class merchants in Boston the 1840s so well before the Civil War. I very, very much like that kind of brave gesture on the part of William Matthew prior. And that's something that we talk about the fact that in maritime New England on the coast you will find an African American middle class and you will find these economic relationships between the artist and the sitters, which are made manifest or concretized in the portraits that you see here. So, one of the reasons why I really wanted that copy is here we have arguably two of the greatest paintings you know this pendant portraits pairs of portraits of these wonderful Bostonians who are involved in the maritime trade from 1843 and what I wanted to do was be able to hang them in a gallery with another pair of portraits. In this case mercy Scali and her husband, John Scali from 1763 because those 80 years basically bracket a sea change in American history that takes us from being a British colony where mercy Scali here in 1763 thought of herself as being a wife of a provincial merchant. Years later, there's a lot of political trouble in town 1215 years later all of a sudden her husband is chairing the select board of revolutionary Boston. Fast forward to the 1840s and you have the African American couple mercy and William, excuse me, Nancy and William Lawson, going about their business in a thriving American port city that is Boston in the early public. So, just that kind of shift from one generation to the next from the Lawson's to the Scali or I should say from the Scali's to the Lawson's, I think is one of the sort of highest and best uses of portraits as a sort of history lesson that we can offer at Shelburne Museum. So I'm very, very proud of the fact that we were able to acquire that painting. And I'm particularly touched, and I'll just end here with a little story which is, we had a restricted fund at the museum where I should say we still have a restricted fund so these are monies that were given for a specific purpose. And we could only use them for acquiring objects in the collection. So when we went to auction and purchase the painting back in December we use that restricted money and these weren't monies that I could use for anything else. And so I was quite, quite pleased to do that. And then what I was so touched is that four of our trustees stepped up immediately thereafter and replenish the funds. So here we were kind of in a pretty dark place back in December in this country. And it wasn't a moment where I thought we were going to be buying a great American painting. But we did. And it adds tremendous value to the collections of Shelburne Museum. And it lets us tell stories about American history and it lets us show how community is created, both historically in Boston and the economic relationships and the social relationships and the sort of patronage matrix between the artist and the sitters and how that works historically but it also lets us be museum we are today, which is an active museum, a creative place and one where we serve audiences of all stripe, and all but very specifically when we work with those fifth grade students who come to Shelburne Museum we want to be able to hang the scollies and one side of the gallery and the Lawson's on the other, and talk about this country and what it means because that's something that is, to be honest, quite frayed today. And what we want to do is make sure that we are an institution that is sort of building community and seeks to build community through our stewardship of these collections. And I think I'll stop there and be happy to take some questions I might. I guess I can stop the share of the program and we can always come back to the PowerPoint if we want to look at anything but happy to happy to go from there and take some q amp a. Thank you Tom that was just terrific and we have a number of questions. Can you hear me okay. First question. It seems that Copley tended to paint married couples in separate portraits rather than together. Are there reasons why he did so that some of copies work to pick couples or family groups in the same portrait. Really good question. So Copley painted portraits because that was his stock in trade. That was what people wanted him to do. As he became more ambitious. And we can see the seeds of that ambition when he sent that that painting of his half brother off to, off to England what he really wanted to be was a grand history painter in the kind of British tradition, like Benjamin West or Sir Joshua Reynolds. And, and so, of course on the eve of the revolution he leaves and he goes to London, and, and doesn't come back, and he's basically painting these great dramatic scenes of battles. He's still a portraitist when he's in England. There's a fun quote here that I had I just pulled back out and it's, it's of when Copley sent that portrait to London from 1776 at the society of artists. And both Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds critiqued that boy with a squirrel. And in Reynolds words I love this in any collection of painting it will pass as an excellent picture but considering the disadvantages Copley had labored under it was a wonderful performance so the fact that Copley is coming from the provinces, made it all the more wonderful in London. Interesting to me that these pendant portraits of which we only have a handful of don't always actually face each other or don't always relate to each other in the way that the gold plate portraits did is equal gold plate. And this gets to I think the heart of the question you just asked that because the, the architectural interiors in Boston would have been smaller than London, or certainly a British country house and I think these portraits are not always hanging together in the room, but maybe interrupted on different walls or either side of a chimney breast so people would understand in Boston that these are, you know, valuable important and kind of precious things to have portraits in the interior, but the convention of actually having the paired portrait on one canvas probably exceeded the scale of the interior in Boston. There's only a handful of houses in Boston the eve of the revolution where you probably would have had a large salon scale canvas or you would have been able to fit it in the room. And that segues really nicely into our next question was what size do these portraits tend to be. Yeah, I should have gotten the dimensions they all tend to be the same size so they're about 28 by 36 inches there and Copley had a kind of a formula for the size of his of his paintings so they all are quite similar. Some are bigger, you'll see at the MFA these really grand ones but the rest of them the sort of workman like ones tend to be the same. The art historian Jules Brown, who used to summer in Vermont, but taught at Yale, was literally wrote the book on John Singleton Copley he wrote the catalog raisin and Copley back in the 1960s. And I read through Jules's book and I noticed just the similarity of size of the canvases. Okay. Question about Mrs. Lawson that interesting that she was a free black woman living in Maine, and question about the fact that she was holding a Bible. Would she have been literate. I think so. And also interesting, she's holding a Bible and there's a biblical scene behind her. Those portraits of Mrs. Lawson were painted in 1843 and she and her husband, and William Matthew Pryor were Millerites they were followers of a particularly charismatic minister in Boston, and his teachings prescribed that the world was going to end I think in March of 1843 and the elect or the believers are going to be called home. And I'm always a little amused this is just my sense of irony that within Millerite theology, the day after it didn't happen is always, it's called the great disappointment. So they had to revise their calendar and suggest that they would all be called to the next world some point some point later. So the fact that the Lawson's actually committed their image to canvas on the eve of, you know what they think it's going to be the end of days I think is very interesting. So I'm quite sure she was literate context is really I'm quite sure that he was literate to because he was a merchant. So I think he was, you know, this this idea of a an African American middle class. We probably only again as I mentioned would have seen that in a port city. Portland, Portsmouth where persons of color were very active participants in the maritime economy and have the ability to to sort of gain literacy and and and become a stature. Okay, another question sort of in contrast to that is with with mercy scholarly. She's not holding anything she has no real artifacts are he is very elegant clothing that she's sort of has as strewn upon her. And then we have her husband who does have a book and pen very plain about how they're very very interesting question and you just said strewn upon her and that was really interesting because it's not a dress. What coply had were these silks in his studio and he would drape women in silks and and kind of make up these fanciful dresses. And there's also a blue dress which appears on several women and clearly he owned the dress and they were wearing, taking it on and off to be representing themselves as kind of provincial upper class women in within the British Empire. So I'm going to go back to Peter Pelham and the sense of how do you know what to wear, and those mesotent so you know if you can imagine, you know, eliminate all visual culture from your experience there's no, you know, there's no television there's no internet there's no vogue magazine the only way you're going to understand what you're supposed to be wearing is what your neighbors wear or a or whatever someone is wearing when they get off the boat from London. So it's a very, very kind of prescribed or circumscribed understanding of how do what fashion is. And so coply's ability to kind of create these fantasies with those silks is really how he lets you as a sitter become part of the, you know, the British Empire identify yourself in that regard. Whereas the husband, I'm sure that's a ledger book. I'm sure he's that's a symbol or representation that he owns your mortgage, or you're trading with him. So, if you think for a moment about the experience of those paintings. So you know we're all used to seeing them in museums, and then for 150 years before that. They were in, you know, private hands they were in the children or grandchildren or great children of the sitters. But if you roll it back to that painting was in the parlor, or best room of one of the largest houses in Boston. So if you saw that painting you either had social or economic interactions or relationships with the sitter with John Scali. If you had economic reasons to be in that parlor with him more likely than not you owed him money. So the, you know, the portrait was part of the theater of doing business in 18th century culture. So, if you can think of you know a great desk and bookcase. You know, big mahogany piece of furniture which would have been holding those ledger books the whole thing is designed frankly to scare you when you come into the room it's all about reinforcing position and prestige. And it's in a fairly competitive sort of worldview that you would understand that portrait and that ledger book. Also interesting to me. The men tend to be fairly fashionable the men less so. And I guess we could kind of push an argument, and this is a little sketchy that the men are all represented in fairly plain clothing. And I think, you know, you can see a distinction between, you know, the, the, the revolutionaries and their plain clothing and some of the Tories and the, in the fancier fancier dress. So you have kind of more American copies and more, more Tory or British copies as well. It doesn't work all the time because John Hancock's wearing some pretty fancy clothes. But, but someone like Scali and others Ezekiel Goldway was wearing a fairly plain, plain outfit. You also mentioned the word theatrical theatrical effect. It's an interesting pose that Mercy Scali has where she's sort of leaning on her hand. I'm not sure how to read her expression on her face but yeah I know we've all been talked about that a little bit internally she's not so happy with her husband that's what we know they're not facing each other they're not leaning into each other. There are a number of portraits of women at, you know, middle age or beyond, which is very interesting. Mrs Goldwaite certainly I suspect this has to do with at what age people have accrued capital to to commission those portraits. There could be a sense of painting a matriarch and a patriarch and a family. There could be a argument to be made that some of them look a little more well fed than others. So that could have some, you know, role in this kind of status symbol that was a portrait in the 18th century. Speaking of which, the portrait of Mrs Goldwaite having, why did he choose to have her reaching for the fruit from the bowl of fruit that seems a rather odd way to portray her. I'm by no means an authority on iconography of portraiture but it's all very specific and all meaningful and the fact that she had fresh fruit in a bowl on a mahogany table was kind of a big deal. So there again, you know, if you were a working class person in Boston. And even talking about you know we're so used to talking about middle class upper class working class you know that class structures fundamentally 19th century. If you roll it back to the 18th century, you know we don't even have that we sort of have haves and have nots if you will artisanal class, and then you know merchant class and then and then people who are very poor. So, you know just the ability to show off a bowl of fruit like that and to reach for the bowl of fruit is pretty dramatic. The reaching is really interesting. Yeah, yeah. And mercy junior mercy scholar junior in the blue dress yeah very delicate portrait with it looks like she's holding a recorder or a flute music. Yeah I think it's a symbol of kind of her gentility exactly. Interesting story there, you know she seems to be soft and reported that she's the fiance of Dr. Joseph Warren, but she seems to have been living with him before getting married so even even this idea of, you know the kind of the Victorian morals of when one gets married and how one keeps house was a little a little different in the 18th century. And then he gets killed and she ends up taking care of his children for a period of time before they then move on to other relatives and then she ends up by herself I think she ends up in Maine in the district of Maine and dies there, having never married. It's interesting that her relationship with Dr. Warren seems to have been a moment of inflection in her life and then when he dies in the battle. You know her prospects are for some reason changed. And she has, I think she was one of the only or the few women has some was wearing headgear she had like maybe a scar that was sort of fancily. Yeah I think she had a band in her hair. Again, following British portrait conventions mezzo tints of that era would have showed hairstyles and some British hairstyles were very, very elaborate. And the architecture and furniture in the hair would have been really quite quite something so hers is fairly simple as a provincial daughter of a provincial merchant but it's still you're right it's still absolutely there. Right. Could you say something about the way the different women were positioned or posing. They seem to be, I mentioned that that mercy junior was very delicate and very slender and very straight but Um, you know I don't know enough about it but I suspect. The portrait conventions that we're used to. You know some of them go back to the 15th century. So all of the iconography and then the sense of posture posture is very important. There's a indicator or or mnemonic or reminder about status and virtue. 18th century, there are even sort of etiquette manuals that show how one is, you know, supposed to comport oneself, mostly for men, particularly in the public sphere and speaking. So they're, you know, they're they're rhetorical manuals or orators manuals that show you how to stand and to claim. So that's all based on understanding of classical classical sculpture, which rolls back through you know every 100 years or someone rediscovers you know Greek and Roman, the Greek and Roman past. So that's all part of that classicizing influence. I'm less kind of sure about the women in that regard other than I'm, I'm quite certain there are expectations on, you know how they would be holding themselves in a portrait. Except for Mrs. scholarly the one. And that is kind of a that's a statement, I mean, yes, yes, she's in, she's in, you know, in repose slightly and that could be that again going back to the sort of voyage of life that she's at a moment in life where one can be in repose. You know, if you're, if you're a 20 year old perspective wife and bride like her daughter was. There's a set of expectations for the portrait. And that may have there's some thinking that that portrait may have been an engagement portrait I think. And then the marriage never happened. But whereas mercy, who is at a different phase of life. So, right, right and I think this is probably going to be our last questions we're approaching the three o'clock hour but question about the frames with the artists have chosen those or yes, yes, really good question and there are a couple of patterns of frames that Copley used and Morrison Hector Mori Hector was the curator of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and he did a whole wonderful essay on copies frames. There's lots of suggestions that maybe Paul Revere was producing the guilt the gold leaf that was used on those frames so there again getting back to this kind of really almost incestuous interwoven nature of relationships. Between these figures, you know, Revere is the fellow who tipped off the British were coming was producing the gold for the carver for the frame maker for the portraitist who had to get out of town. Because his father in law's tea had just been dumped in the harbor. So it's, it's you know it's really interesting how they all, they all knew each other, and, but we're not on the same size. Right, right. I think that's all the time we have for questions today but thank you everyone for submitting them and, and please do keep in mind to submit your questions in our future lectures. And Tom this was just terrific and thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate your, your time and your expertise and the fact that you return and we'll look forward to having you come back and talk about maybe that other topic that you mentioned. Well we could do yeah exactly Carol, my pleasure thank you Beth thank you Carol. Take care everyone. Bye.