Daniel Boardman

1789

Ralph Earl

Painter, American, 1751 - 1801

A pale-skinned man wearing a white waistcoat, navy-blue coat with tails, knee-length britches, and white stockings stands in front of a deep landscape in this vertical portrait painting. The man nearly fills the right half of the composition. He stands with one ankle crossed in front of the other and his body angled to our left. He looks out at us with brown eyes under wide, dark gray brows. He has a round face with a wide jaw, a straight nose, and his thin, pale pink lips are closed. His gray hair is brushed back from his forehead and sweeps down over his ears. A white cravat is tied in a bow around his neck under a cream-white waistcoat, which is trimmed with pale peach and has two rows of peach buttons down the front. The jacket has gold-colored buttons, and translucent, ruffled cuffs flare out at the wrists. A fob hangs from his parchment-white pants, which are fastened with an oval-shaped, diamond-encrusted buckle on the outside of the knee facing us. His stockings are pearl white, and his black shoes have square silver buckles. He holds a black hat in his left hand, to our right, and his other hand rests on the end of a waist-high wooden walking stick, which angles out to our left where the brass end is braced against the ground. A brown form behind him and to the right could be a column, edge of a building, or a tree trunk. A thick trunk angles out on the far side of his head, and a smaller tree grows up the left side of the composition. Grassy fields reach back to a winding river and a town with a church spire, manor house, and other buildings tucked among hills. Lavender-gray clouds press in to either side of a sunset sky lit pale pink at the center. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, "R. Earl Pinxt 1789.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. W. Murray Crane

  • Dimensions

    overall: 207.4 x 140.4 cm (81 5/8 x 55 1/4 in.)
    framed: 228 x 160 x 10.2 cm (89 3/4 x 63 x 4 in.)

  • Accession

    1948.8.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The sitter's grandson, Rev. William S. Boardman [b. 1838], New York.[1] The sitter's great-grandniece, Josephine Porter Boardman Crane [Mrs. Winthrop Murray Crane, 1873-1972], New York and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, by 1935;[2] gift 1948 to NGA.
[1] The portrait presumably was inherited first by the sitter's son Frederic William Henry Boardman [1804-1882], New York City and New Hamburg, New York, and then by his son William S. Boardman. On these relationships see Charlotte Goldthwaite, Boardman Genealogy 1525-1895, (Hartford, 1895), 331-332, 408.
[2] Mrs. Crane, the great-granddaughter of Elijah Boardman, the sitter's brother, owned the portrait by 1935, when she lent it to the exhibition at Yale University. Carl Boardman Cobb recalled that Mrs. Crane, his great-aunt, said she bought the painting from another member of the family (telephone interview, 8 January 1990). For Mrs. Crane's dates see Goldthwaite 1895, 545, and the National Cyclopedia of American Biography 57 (Clifton, New Jersey, 1977), 720.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1935

  • Connecticut Portraits by Ralph Earl, 1751-1801, Gallery of Fine Arts, Yale University, New Haven, 1935, no. 15.

1940

  • Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 172.

1945

  • Ralph Earl, 1751-1801, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Worcester Art Museum, 1945-1946, no. 14.

1946

  • American Painting, The Tate Gallery, London, 1946, no. 76.

1991

  • Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, 1991-1992, 152, no. 28.

Bibliography

1895

  • Goldthwaite, Charlotte. Boardman Genealogy 1525-1895. Hartford, 1895: 331.

1907

  • Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College. 1907: 4:182.

1934

  • Sherman, Frederic Fairchild. "Ralph Earl: An Eighteenth Century Connecticut Portrait Painter." Art in America 22, no. 3 (June 1934): 83, 88, repro. facing 81.

1935

  • Connecticut Portraits by Ralph Earl, 1751-1801. Exh. cat. Gallery of Fine Arts, Yale University, New Haven, 1935: no. 15.

1939

  • Sherman, Frederic Fairchild. "The Painting of Ralph Earl With a List of His Portraits." Art in America 27, no. 4 (October 1939): 177, no. 33.

1945

  • Ralph Earl, 1751-1801. Exh. cat. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Worcester Art Museum, 1945-1946: no. 14.

1946

  • Goodrich, Lloyd. "Ralph Earl." Magazine of Art 39, no. 1 (January 1946): 5, repro. 2 (detail).

  • American Painting. Exh. cat. The Tate Gallery, London, 1946: no. 76.

1960

  • Sawitzky, William, and Susan Sawitzky. "Two Letters from Ralph Earl, with Notes on his English Period." Worcester Art Museum Annual 8 (1960): 27, repro. 26 (detail).

1967

  • Goodrich, Laurence B. Ralph Earl, Recorder of an Era. Albany, 1967: 9-10, 58, fig. 24.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 52, repro.

1980

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: no. 11, color repro.

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 150, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 73, repro. 74.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 394, no. 560, color repro.

1988

  • Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. Ralph Earl: Artist-Entrepreneur. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1988: 129-130, 258.

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 70, no. 12, color repro.

1991

  • Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic. Exh. cat. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth. New Haven, London, and Hartford, 1991-1992: 152, no. 28.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 169, repro.

1995

  • Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 96-98, color repro. 97.

Inscriptions

lower left: R. Earl Pinxt 1789-

Wikidata ID

Q20179635

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