Browere's Life Masks of Great AmericansHart, Charles Henry
History
Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans
Hart, Charles Henry
Browere, John Henri Isaac, 1792-1834; Masks (Sculpture); Sculpture, American; United States -- Biography -- Portraits
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, was born in
Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767, and died in the Speaker’s room
of the House of Representatives at Washington, February 28, 1848. He has
been called the most cultivated occupant that the Presidential chair has
ever had; but his administration was unimportant, and he
[Illustration: CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
Age 18]
personally was the most unpopular man who has yet achieved the high
office. He seems to have anticipated Whistler in the “gentle art of
making enemies.”
Not the least interesting of Browere’s busts is the youthful head of
Charles Francis Adams, made when Mr. Adams had just passed his
eighteenth birthday, he having been born August 18, 1807, in Boston,
where he died November 21, 1886. The services of Mr. Adams to his
country, as minister to England from 1861 to 1868, covering the entire
period of the war between the States, can never be forgotten or
overestimated, and will remain among the foremost triumphs of American
diplomacy.
It is certainly of curious interest to have busts of three generations,
in one family, made by the same hand and within a few days of each
other, as is the case with Browere’s casts of John, John Quincy, and
Charles Francis Adams.
[Illustration]
VII
_Mr. and Mrs. Madison_
“Jimmy” Madison and his wife “Dolly” were prominent characters in social
as well as in public life. He early made a name for himself by his
knowledge of constitutional law, and acquired fame by the practical use
he made of his knowledge, in the creation of the Constitution of the
United States, and in its interpretation in the celebrated letters of
the “Federalist.” With the close of Washington’s administration Madison
determined to retire to private life, but shortly before this he met the
coy North Carolina Quakeress, Dorothea Payn. She was at the time the
young widow of John Todd, to whom she had been married not quite a year,
and Madison made her his wife.
James Madison was born in 1751 and Dorothea Payn in 1772, but the score
and one years’ difference in their ages did
[Illustration: JAMES MADISON
Age 74]
not prevent them from enjoying a married life of two score and two years
of unclouded happiness. Madison died in 1836, and was survived by Mrs.
Madison for thirteen years.
Madison’s temperament, like that of his young bride, was tuned to too
high a pitch to be contented with quietness after the excitement
incident to his earlier career. Therefore his retirement, like stage
farewells, was only temporary, and he became afterward the fourth
President of the United States. As we have seen, it was Madison who
brought Browere to the notice of Jefferson, and Browere was commended to
Madison in the following letter from General Jacob Brown, the land hero
of the war of 1812, and later Commander-in-chief of the Army of the
United States:
WASHINGTON CITY, Oct. 1st, 1825.
_My Dear Sir_:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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