AFA 18th Anniversary

1. Jo Pugh, Lost cities and found documents: do we ever discover in archives? Friday 25 April 2014, http:// blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/lost-cities-found-documents-ever-discover-archives. 2. Smibert’s painting of Thomas Hancock is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Lydia’s is in the Colby College Museum of Art. The portraits of Thomas’s parents, the Rev. John Hancock (1671–1752) and Elizabeth [Clark] Hancock (1687–1760), are in the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, Mass.; Lydia’s parents, Daniel Henchman and Elizabeth Gerrish/Jerrick Henchman, are at the Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio. 3. Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new serial, vol. 42, pt. 1 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1952), No. 354, p. 98. 4. A series of letters in the then-director’s correspondence detailed how the portraits entered the collection. My appreciation goes to RISD curator Maureen O’Brien and archivist Douglas Doe for their generous help. 5. Letter to Mr. L. Earle Rowe from William C. Loring, February 12, 1932. He showed Lydia’s portrait to Mr. Harry B. Wehle of The Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, who said: “it might well be a Peale.” Wehle was the author of American Miniatures, 1730–1850 . Loring also consulted the noted miniature collector, Mrs. Dorothy Gannett (interior designer Dorothy Draper), who “felt from the first instant that it was a Charles Wilson Peale.” 6. I first saw the black and white photographs published in the on-line article “Mourning the Hancock Children, Lydia & Johnny,” October 23, 2014, http://www.silkdamask.org/2014/10/mourning-jewelry- portrait-miniatures.html. They are also pictured on https://www.findagrave.com and on www.geni.com. The y were first published in 1905 in Dorothy Quincy, Wife of John Hancock and Events of her Time by Dorothy’s great-great niece Ellen C.D.Q. Woodbury. 7. Personal email from Ms. Anne E. Bentley, curator at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Nov. 9, 2015. 8. My thanks to Sabina Beauchard of the MHS for taking a photograph for my research. The daguerreotype (visible oval image 1 ¹⁄₃ x 1 in. [ninth plate]; case: 3 x 2½ in.) was probably made by Southworth & Hawes, in business in Boston 1843 to 1863. The pictures of the miniatures of the children are later photographs on paper with 20th-century frames. 9. My thanks to Hancock family descendant Mr. John Anderson for sharing E.L.H. Wood’s 1917 inventory with me. (Personal emails, Aug. 20, 2017 and Sept. 11, 2017.) John Hancock’s will is available on Ancestry.com in the Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635–1991, Probate Records, Vol. 103, 1860. 10. John Singleton Copley’s 1765 portrait of her husband John is also in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 11. Peale learned to paint miniatures while studying at Benjamin West’s studio in England. He wrote to West on April 9, 1783: “…I have done more in miniature than in any other manner, because these are more portable and therefore could be kept out of the way of a plundering Enemy.” The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and his Family, vol. 1, ed. Lillian B. Miller, et al. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press), p. 387–88. 12. Peale noted the dates he worked on the portraits in his diary. In addition, John Adams wrote about seeing both miniatures on a visit to Peale’s studio. Because of a wartime shortage of materials, Peale often made many of his own cases and adapted watch crystals to serve as glass. Peale also lacked access to durable pigments—the organic, and very fugitive red lake pigments he used tended to lose saturation with exposure to light. Consequently, many of Peale’s miniatures now look blue and faded. The miniatures of Lydia and her father have retained their original colors and vibrancy—probably because they were kept in storage. 13. There are no records of baby Lydia’s birth, baptism, or death. It is assumed the records were destroyed in the war. 14. John Hancock to Dorothy Hancock, 10 March 1777, http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/ john-hancock-letter-to-dorothy-hancock-march-10-1777.html. 15. Personal bill recording payment, John Hancock to David Evans, August 11, 1777, Hancock Family Papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. For information on the desk, see Nancy Goyne Evans, Windsor-chair Making in America: From Craft Shop to Consumer ( UPNE, 2006), p. 428. 16. The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and his Family , vol. 1, ed. Lillian B. Miller, et al. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press) p. 415n. 17. Two other Peale miniatures known with a background include a 1767 portrait, Matthias and Thomas Bordley, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and a ca. 1768 Portrait of a Young Boy in the Bayou Bend Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 18. Sellers mentions the July 24, 1780 letter in Peale Papers: vol. 1, p. 351n. The June 20, 1784 letter is reproduced on page 412. This letter provides evidence that Lydia died in Philadelphia. 19. A possible candidate for the artist is Joseph Dunkerley, active in Boston at the time. Dunkerley came to America as a British soldier but deserted and joined the Americans in 1778. In 1781 he rented a house from silversmith Paul Revere, who made many of his miniature cases. He later opened a shop on Newbury Street, and in 1786 he moved to a home on Winter Street, directly across the Commons from John Hancock’s mansion. He left Boston in 1788 to live in Jamaica. For more about Dunkerley see the 2016 online article by Michael I. Tormey, Featured Artist: Joseph Dunkerley (1752–1806) at http://www.michaelsmuseum.com/articles/Dunckerley.pdf and the 2014 article by Don N. Hagist, “He’d Rather Be Painting” in the online Journal of the American Revolution at https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/02/hed-rather-be-painting. 20. Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale with patron and populace . vol. 59 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1969), p. 61. I have found only these two lockets of this design so far. They are probably European. Further research is being conducted. 21. Robin Jaffee Frank, Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Art Gallery, 2000), p. 13. 2018 Antiques & Fine Art 153 Fig. 9: Front and rear views of the locket containing the miniature of Colonel Christian Febiger by Charles Willson Peale. The minia- ture was painted ca. 1781 while the mourning picture on the reverse was painted ca. 1796. The current location is unknown. See Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace, vol. 59 (American Philosophical Society, 1969), 138.