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Asher Brown Durand

Gouverneur Kemble, 1853

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 86.3 x 68.6 cm (34 x 27 in.)

framed: 118.7 x 100.3 x 7.6 cm (46 3/4 x 39 1/2 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.2

Artists / Makers

Asher Brown Durand (artist) American, 1796 - 1886

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right: A.B.D. 1853

Provenance

(Rose M. de Forest [Mrs. Augustus de Forest], New York); purchased 9 May 1922 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[1] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1947 to NGA.

[1] The name of the seller and the date of the purchase by Clarke are recorded in an annotated copy of Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke (Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928) in files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (transcription in NGA curatorial records and copy in NGA library). According to de Forest, the painting was purchased from the estate of Abraham Van Buren, son of President Martin Van Buren. Although Kemble and Martin Van Buren were friends, Abraham Van Buren's ownership of this portrait is unverified. His will (copy in NGA curatorial files) makes no mention of the painting.

Associated Names

Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
de Forest, Rose M.

Exhibition History

1923: Exhibition of Portraits by Early American Portrait Painters, The Union League Club, New York, 1923, no. 17.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue.

1949: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1949.

1950: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1950.

1951: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1951.

1953: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1953.

1955: Famous Americans, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland, 1955, no cat.

1967: Loan for display with permanent collection, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1967-1980.

1986: Extended loan for use by Ambassador Robie Marcus Hooker Palmer, U.S. Embassy residence, Budapest, Hungary, 1986-1990.

Technical Summary

The painting is on a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric support with a selvage along the bottom edge. It is attached to its original four-member, mortise-and-tenon stretcher and remains unlined. A colormen's stencil, "PREPARED/BY/EDWD DECHAUX/NEW YORK" and "27 x 34," appears once on the reverse. The ground is a thin, even, grayish white layer with a transparent, reddish brown imprimatura layer that is visible through some of the more thinly painted passages, as in the hair. The paint was applied with moderately thick blended brushstrokes in the flesh areas and the vest of the sitter, and in fairly thin, random brushstrokes in the coat and background. There are minor areas of inpainting in the hair and the left cheek of the sitter, and a toned varnish over the sitter's face and vest. The varnish is slightly yellowed.

Bibliography

1853: "Fine Arts." Home Journal 2 (8 October 1853): 6.

1867: Tuckerman 1867, 188.

1887: Appleton's Cyclopedia of Biography Edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. 6 vols. New York, 1888: 2:268.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered.

1930: Sherman 1930, 41; reprinted in Sherman, Frederic Fairchild, "Asher B. Durand as a Portrait Painter." Art in America 18 (October 1930): 316.

1966: Lawall, David B. "Asher Brown Durand: His Art and Art Theory in Relation to his Times." 4 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1966: 3:154-155.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 50, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 146, repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 161, repro.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 136-138, color repro.

1997: Fahlman, Betsy. John Ferguson Weir, Newark and London, 1997, p. 22, repro.