Face-to-Face: Thomas Jefferson portrait by Mather Brown

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Brandon Fortune: This is the first portrait that Thomas Jefferson sat for. [[inaudible background sounds]]

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It was done in the spring of 1786 in London, and it was painted by an American artist, Mather Brown

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who like other American artists at the time, some other American artists of the time, had traveled to London to study with Benjamin West,

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who had become a very successful artist in London but his roots were also in America.

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This painted portrait of Thomas Jefferson came to the National Portrait Gallery in 1999 as a bequest from Charles Francis Adams and therein lies the heart of our story.

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Charles Francis Adams was a direct descendant of John Adams who was, in the 1780's, Jefferson's very good friend.

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This portrait was part of essentially an exchange of portraits between two friends: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

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Jefferson's portrait stayed in the Adams family, Adams' portrait which [[interrupted: "Oop, I have to get from you, my prop."]]

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Adams' portrait, also done by Mather Brown in 1788, stayed in Jefferson's family. Please feel free to take a look and pass it around.

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This portrait opens a window for us into that friendship, into Jefferson's nascent portrait collection, which he later brought back with him to Monticello,

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and to what it was to create a- a public image of an American diplomat for - um - the time that he was at the French courts.

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We have several interlocking stories all centered on this really very beautiful and elegant painting of Thomas Jefferson.

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Brandon Fortune: In 1786, Adams was in London. He was minister to the court of Saint James.

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Jefferson was living in Paris. He had, on the retirement of Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785, become minister to France.

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He had been negotiating some commercial treaties before taking on that position, and he traveled to London in the spring of 1786 to try to negotiate a few more treaties without really any success.

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But while he was there, he called on the Adams, and was persuaded, because he wanted a portrait of himself and also one of John Adams to bring back to Paris, to sit to Mather Brown.

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Now, there were other American artists in London at the time. Gilbert Stuart was there, and of course, Benjamin West.

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Mather Brown was fairly young, he was studying with West, but somehow, he had gotten to know the Adams family.

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John Adams had had a portrait done by Mather Brown about 1785, Abigail Adams had been painted, and I also think their daughter Abigail, or Nabby, had been painted.

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So Mather Brown came to Jefferson's attention. He sat for this portrait, and after the sitting, he left to go back to Paris.

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He then later decided that he wanted a portrait of Adams as well.

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So letters began to fly back and forth across the channel, and Jefferson was working also with another artist, John Trumbull, who was serving as Jefferson's private secretary at the time.

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And Trumbull was helping Jefferson amass a collection of portraits. Not a huge collection, but he wanted a portrait of George Washington, obviously a portrait of John Adams.

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He wanted a portrait of Thomas Payne. He wanted portraits of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Hernan Cortes, and who's left? De Soto.

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He wanted portraits of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton, the three greatest thinkers, as he called them, the world has ever known.

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He was putting together his own collection of portraits of people who were important for America, Enlightenment thought,

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and he wasn't the only person to do this, but it was interesting because he was putting together this collection to hang in his house in Paris,

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so that when people came to see him, because one's house was really a rather public place in the 18th century, especially if you were minister to the court of Versailles.

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His own portrait would have been part of that collection as well, and what you're seeing here is an extremely elegant Thomas Jefferson.

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He's wearing a frock coat, a very sort of loose-fitting and slightly comfortable and yet still appropriate dress coat with a turn-down collar.

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It actually doesn't seem to have any buttons, and there are other paintings of frock coats that show the more normal buttons that you would see on them.

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This may mean that it was a French frock coat, that he acquired in Paris, because they often didn't have buttons.

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We learned so much from his story and his costume, and I'm very much indebted to two colleagues who have studied Jefferson and his portraits and his collections from his home in Monticello,

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Elizabeth Chew and Gabe Wiltson, whose research into this portrait and Jefferson's costume really form the basis of much of what I'm talking to you about tonight.

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As well as one other colleague, David Meschutt, who sadly is no longer living, who studied this exchange of portraits between Jefferson and Adams.

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So as you find in so many of life's endeavors, we're always building on the scholarship of others.

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So Jefferson's wearing a frock coat, a beautiful striped silk waist coat, a wonderful sort of pleated neck-linen with the little tie at the top, and interestingly, and this is 1786, he's not wearing a wig.

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He's wearing his own hair which has been dressed with a fragrant hair dressing called pomatum, and then powdered.

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And we know this is most likely true because we don't see any of the real tell tale signs of the edge of a wig that you can sometimes see in portraits, but also, there are no records of Jefferson buying wigs at this time.

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But there are records of him buying copious amounts of hair powder,

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and talking about how his "valet de chambre", his valet, was dressing his hair and in fact he made a wonderful comment, which I can't quote precisely, to Abigail Adams

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in saying that: I am probably only going to live twelve more years and one of them is going to be taken up with having my damn hair dressed and powdered. [[laughter]]

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But, you have to remember that Jefferson is going to the court of Versailles which was, here in these years before the French Revolution,

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one of the most formal places he could go and he had to walk a tight rope,

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because he had to be dressed appropriately and comport himself with all the formality required of a minister of a young United States to this bastion of monarchical power, the court of Versailles;

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but he also wanted to convey a sense of the simplicity of the new American republic and of course he is following Benjamin Franklin,

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who had his own way of appearing to be the sort of the man with a beaver hat and he is coming to the court of Versailles determined to shake things up a little bit.

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Jefferson clearly was not going to follow precisely Franklin's steps because, let's face it, who could? [[laughter]]

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But he wanted to appear to be both formal and also carry himself with an elegant simplicity and if you look at other portraits of the time and I don't have a cheat sheet for you, but

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there are portraits of French aristocrats from very much the same time wearing formal clothing they would have worn for a visit to the court and they would have been wearing ribbons and decorations, not really like military medals but honors,

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sort of like the one medal that some Americans were giving to those who fought with Washington as officers, the society of the, members of the society of Cincinnati war decoration, but you won't see any of that in Jefferson's attire.

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And the other thing that gives away that he is promoting the American Republic is this classical figure in the background who is holding a pole with what is actually a little hat on the top.

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She is actually meant to portray "Liberty" and the cap that she has on top of her pole is called a Phrygian cap and it is a reference to caps worn by freed slaves in ancient Rome and over the course of the Renaissance and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it came to symbolize liberty.

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And so Jefferson has a figure of liberty with a liberty cap in the background, the same kind of figure shows up in designs of the great seal of the United States in much the same time.

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So in this really rather quiet way, Jefferson is indicating exactly who he is and who he represents.

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Now, the painting is begun in 1786, Jefferson is back in France, he wants Adams' portrait; Adams is demurring and he is too busy and he doesn't do it, but finally he sits for Mather Brown in 1788.

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Jefferson also agreed that Adams could have a replica of his portrait, a a copy by Mather Brown, which we art historians call a replica.

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And we're fairly sure but not positive that this painting, which is in fact signed M. Brown 1786, was the original [[noise]] but Jefferson wanted the original, but this is the portrait that stayed with Adams.

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So we're not quite sure, scholars aren't quite, sure what happened - but it seems likely that this is the original portrait.

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Now, Jefferson had Adams portrait, Adams had his own portrait, Adams had Jefferson's portrait, Jefferson had a replica of his own portrait.

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Am I confusing you enough? Each man had a portrait of himself and of his good friend.

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At some point after the death of both men, one of those portraits in each family disappeared.

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And so, as I mentioned before, portrait of Adams survived in the Jefferson family and this portrait survived in the family of Adams.

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Um, Adams' portrait ended up, after being sold at auction after Jefferson's death, uh, in the collections of the Boston Athenaeum, and that's the image I was passing around for you to see.

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At the time, two different people commented that Adams' likeness was really very good, and that Jefferson's, not so much.

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that was the...

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And yet, when we look at miniature portraits done by Trumbull at very much the same time, the features are all there.

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And one scholar has suggested that in fact, because Jefferson was such a lively person, that it would have been unusual for his face to have been seen in to this degree of repose.

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So maybe that's it, because when we, from that distance of over 200 years, look at other portraits of Jefferson from around the same time, it seems to be quite a wonderful likeness of him.

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Now, what happened with the relationship between these two dear friends, who wanted their portraits so badly that they crossed the English Channel to to make that happen?

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By the 1790's - and I am not a biographer of either Adams or Jefferson - but I can tell you that by the 1790's political divisions caused them to despise - each other.

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They hated each other, and they hated each other until about 1812, when Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was a physician in Philadelphia, decided that enough was enough.

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These were two elder statesman, they both served their country as president, they should get back together.

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And he prodded them - and Adams is in Massachusetts, Jefferson is retired to Monticello - he prods them to get back together.

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And so they began a correspondence that lasts from 1813 until 1826, and I think it's Adams who says to Jefferson: "It would be a shame if we die before we explain ourselves to each other."

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And so, in these latter days of their lives, they strike up a correspondence, which has been published and edited by a wonderful scholar Douglass Adair and you can read these letters, and they are fabulous, wonderful reading.

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On July the 4th 1826 Jefferson dies.

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Later that day Adams dies and I don't know if you all know this it's one of the most amazing coincidences in history.

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And when Adams dies according to his family one of his last words was but Jefferson survives and of course he didn't.

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But this portrait contains all those stories in it. And I hoped I have helped you to bring it to life a little bit tonight.

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I am happy to try to answer questions. Thank you.

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Yes. [[clapping]] Thank you.

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Who is going to be first? You go first and then you be second?

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{{inaudible questioning}} Yes. He was descended from the Mather family of Boston.

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You have heard of Cotton Mather. And he wanted to study art and went to London and really had a very nice career there.

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Um. I think he did come back to the United States eventually maybe by the 1790s. Umm.

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There are publications on his portraiture. This is very typical of his portraiture.

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He is working in a very English style, if you think of John Singleton Copley's work before the American Revolution it was very sort of tightly painted style.

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Even when Copley got to England he began to adopt this looser British style of painting.

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And that's what Mather Brown was also um affecting, that sort of loosely painted style.

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So he had a very nice career.

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And you had a question.

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It's very fresh and loosely painted in fact one of the umm one of the contemporaries of Jefferson had commented that it didn't really look like him.

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Called it, he said it's very much an etude, a study, and it umm definitely has a freshness and you can see the brushstrokes.

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So maybe that's what you're seeing, that freshness.

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It's also in very good condition and even it's it's original frame was uh conserved recently through a wonderful grant from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.

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Which that group sponsors the Smithsonian crafts fair every April.

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I don't know if you've visited the crafts fair or know about it but all the proceeds from the fair are given back to the Smithsonian and we all apply for grants and one of those grants helped preserve the frame for this portrait.

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Other questions? Yes. That's right.

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Unknown speaker: [[inaudible]] or not but I just wondered if you could explain the difference cause it is to me so dramatic and so perfect almost compared to the other one, which I think the family liked.

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Brandon Fortune: You know, Jefferson, once he sort of broke the ice and sat for this portrait,

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Brandon Fortune: he sat for many portraits throughout his career and each artist sees I think something a little different in Jefferson.

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Brandon Fortune: Trumbull knew him very well, and I think he brought that deep knowledge of Jefferson with him so much in Paris and later to the,

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Brandon Fortune: um, I think the part you're talking about is a small portrait.

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Brandon Fortune: There's one that, one belongs to Monticello and one to the White House, um, and it has a vivacity that you don't see here and

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Brandon Fortune: a bit more, sort of, sensitive individuality. And that may be what others were seeing and not liking about this one.

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Brandon Fortune: Rembrandt Peale did wonderful portraits of Jefferson when he was president, including one that belongs to

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Brandon Fortune: the Newark Historical Society with beautiful fur collar and in that you get a great deal of precision and detail.

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Brandon Fortune: Thomas Sully painted Jefferson later in his life and included a wonderful full length and there you get a very free brush

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Brandon Fortune: and just different interpretations, which is, with a public figure, you can get insight into the way a lot of different artists see that person,

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Brandon Fortune: whereas for most people at this time, there would've been no portrait or perhaps for someone with enough money to afford one,

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Brandon Fortune: a portrait of the head of the family or maybe of a husband and wife or a beloved child

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Brandon Fortune: but with these public figures, there were so many portraits because there was such an interest in them.

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Brandon Fortune: And prints were made after some of the portraits and exchanged and sold so that you,

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Brandon Fortune: you've hit on something kind of wonderful that was somebody like Jefferson, we can

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Brandon Fortune: try to have a contest as to who really captured him, but, of course, we don't know! Other questions?

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[[inaudible background sound]] Yes, yes and some artist would make replicas that were very, very, very careful copies to use that word - um - and you might find that they're a - a little bit stiffer, because they're not painted from life, but from a two dimensional object to begin with.

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Others painted replicas with as much - um - freedom as originals like Gilbert Stuart was one of those. I've I've learned from my colleague at the portrait gallery Alan Miles that one way to tell if a painting is a replica by Stuart or perhaps a copy by someone else, particularly when you're looking at portraits of Washington, is that Stuart would get bored so he would change things up a little bit.

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A little bit different neck linen or something like that. [[background laughter]] Um, keeping the main gist of the thing, but with a little bit of a change. Whereas other artist would make a very careful copy, even of a painting they had done themselves.
[SILENCE]

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Other questions? Well I'm so pleased that you came. Thank you very much! [[background clapping noises and thanks]] and you've got thirty more minutes.