The wives and children of these interesting men are also included in
the collection, and later, when he visited New Orleans and other States
where slavery was permitted, we find occasionally a slave’s picture
“belonging” to the family. As in his English collections, the names of
his sitters, the date, and name of place where taken, and sometimes
curious details such as height and weight, are all entered, not only
beneath each portrait in the folio, but also at the back of the portrait
itself; and also in his list-books newspaper cuttings are sometimes
added. In 1840 five hundred and thirty-one portraits were taken in the
same places, in Washington and Saratoga Springs. Major-General Winfield
Scott (Commander-in-Chief) is amongst them.
The year 1841 was the time of the great Log Cabin election, and Harrison,
the hero, is shown with two autographs in Edouart’s books, besides
his whole Cabinet and the orators, demagogues, place-hunters, and
abolitionists, who all seem to have visited the studio of the artist,
whatever their political opinions. Seven hundred and sixty-five portraits
were taken in this year at Washington and elsewhere.
After the tragic death of Harrison, John Tyler, the only man who was
President without election, was taken by Edouart, and it gave the
author great pleasure to present to the American nation his autographed
silhouette. It was taken at the White House in 1841, and was returned
there through Mr. Taft in June, 1911, after seventy years’ wandering.
When arranging the presentation, His Excellency, James Bryce, our
Ambassador in Washington, was much interested, because Edouart had
visited his old home in the north of Ireland and cut the portraits of his
father and grandfather, which are still preserved there, and are fine
likenesses.
In 1842 Edouart travelled further afield, and made six hundred and
forty-one pictures in New Orleans and other States he had not yet
visited; in Cambridge he cut Longfellow, the Appleton family, the
President of Harvard, and dozens of professors and students of the
College.
In 1843 four hundred and sixty of the citizens of Philadelphia, New York,
Saratoga Springs, Norwich (Conn.), Charlestown, and other towns too
numerous to mention, were taken, named, dated, and placed in his folios.
There are an interesting crowd of congress-men, senators, financial
celebrities, actors, musicians, editors, men of science, and the
members of the Army and Navy, mostly in uniform, including Macomb, then
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.
In 1844 five hundred and eighty-nine portraits are extant from a dozen
different cities, and then we come down to eight pictures taken in 1845,
four only in 1846, and four only in the next three years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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