Dick Boyle: Portraits reveal lives of painters, subjects

SALISBURY — Dick Boyle greeted the crowd at the Scoville Memorial Library on Saturday, Feb. 15, by commenting on their attire.“You look like Shackleton’s crew,” he said, referring to Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.Boyle, an art historian, spoke about Salisbury Faces as part of the Era of Elegance lecture series sponsored by the library and the Salisbury Association Historical Society.He began by sketching out the stylistic history of American portraiture — from the “grand manner” portraits (à la John Singer Sargent), with the subjects painted with trappings that indicated their status, to the naive and self-taught style of itinerant portrait painters.And, in between, the “middle way” — realistic portraits, with strong technique and a “warts and all” approach.Boyle concentrated on the paintings held in public collections in town, many of them in the Salisbury Association’s collection.Quoting town historian Katherine Chilcoat, he said, “There is a surprising amount of art in Salisbury’s public buildings” — Town Hall, the library and the Academy Building.“I will add that much of it is portraiture.” He said that portraits were a mainstay in American art, especially in the Colonial and post-Revolutionary War period, and served a practical purpose — as a family record — in the age before the invention of photography. The Salisbury Association’s collection, he added, is particularly strong in the 1830s to 1840s.Boyle’s talk was accompanied primarily with images projected on a screen (what used to be called a slide show).Of a portrait of Jane Lyman Holley, attributed to Erastus Salisbury Field, Boyle said it belongs to the naive school.There are a number of Holley family portraits in the association’s collection. “It tells us that one family had a considerable impact on the town.”Some were found in the Holley Williams house, rolled up in an attic. Boyle said another one was discovered tucked behind a sofa.One slide was of Alexander Hamilton Holley, by an unknown artist, with an approximate date of 1830. It is a charcoal drawing of the man staring into the middle distance— an expression that could come from the artist working from a daguerrotype, an early form of photography, which would push the date up into the 1840s.It was also common practice at the time for an artist to embellish a photograph by drawing directly on it, Boyle said.He showed two somewhat more sophisticated portraits by Field — of Albert Moore, who served as town treasurer and probate court judge, and his wife, Jane. The date is circa 1840.Boyle said the two paintings are not as naive as the portrait of Jane Lyman Holley. “They are a little more proficient technically. But it’s still a linear, direct style, characteristic of itinerant portrait painters.“That was the job: to get a likeness.”Field’s portrait of Albert’s wife, Jane, in which the lady is holding a fan, is unusual. Boyle said often a female subject would be holding a Bible. “The fan is a throwback to 18th-century French portraiture, for whatever reason.”Two portraits attributed to another traveling painter, Ammi Phillips, circa 1830, show brothers Augustus and William Miles. They are realistic although, in the case of Augustus, “the hand looks like a lobster claw.“It’s kind of charming.”The portrait of William Miles, has better, less-crustacean hands, and the painter uses the contrast between the subject’s black coat and his white pleated shirt to good effect.Edwin White (1817-1877) painted a number of Salisbury faces. Boyle was able to demonstrate how White created his portrait of John Milton Holley after the latter’s death in 1836, beginning with White’s charcoal drawing of an etching.Boyle had the next step, not on a slide, but live, on an easelWhite used a translucent paper, similar to modern tracing paper, called “pounce paper.” The pounce paper was placed over the charcoal drawing, and the artist made a series of tiny pinpricks.“Then he connected the dots, so to speak. So we have the oil painting, the etching, the charcoal sketch and this. We see the entire progression of how White worked at the time.”The painting hangs in Town Hall. “You can see it when you go to pay your taxes. It might ease the pain.”Then there is White’s 1844 portrait of Maria Birch Coffing with a black woman, Jane Winslow, in the background.Boyle says the inclusion of Winslow is intriguing. Was she a slave, a servant, a free person? “She seems to be peering around the corner,” looking beyond the painter.“That’s what portraits do — they imply certain things, and create interest.”Boyle finished with Ellen Emmet Rand (1875-1941), and a portrait of the Scoville sisters that is in the library that bears their name, from around 1900, “in her Sargent phase.” One of the sisters is fiddling with her necklace.“It’s a more sophisticated, more trained style” — an example of the middle way.Rand’s 1921 portrait of Judge Donald Ticknor Warner shows a stern-looking gentleman in profile, brandishing a paper which is off-white, which then draws the eye to the brighter white of the shirt cuffs, to the shirt collar and then to the face — all against a black jacket and a neutral background.Boyle likened the technique to Fred Astaire’s practice of wearing brightly colored socks. “Astaire wanted you to look at his feet.”Similarly, Rand uses the increasing intensities of white to draw the viewer’s eye to the judge’s face.The last slide was Rand’s portrait of “Davy Jones of Mt. Riga” (1926). Jones, in plain and decidedly informal clothing, has a quizzical expression. “It’s as if to say, ‘Why me?’”