AFA Summer 2018

Antiques & Fine Art 91 2018 notice did not explicitly state a Lafayette association, the listings match detailed descriptions in several craftsmen’s invoices to the city, including two from Isaac Vose & Son. Boston’s Board of Aldermen’s Papers for 1824 include extensive records of the city’s preparations for the visit. 2 Boston had just incorporated as a city in 1822, with aldermen now serving as the top ranking administrative body. Two thick folders of documents include copies of the formal invitation of Mayor Josiah Quincy to Lafayette and the general’s florid acceptance; correspondence of the aldermen with a “club” of Boston gentlemen offering their so-called “Subscription House” to the city for Lafayette’s lodgings, and the city’s acceptance; 3 complaints from citizens that the city’s offer to host Lafayette should be paid for by the entire citizenry, not just by an elite group of leading men; and dozens of receipts from local vendors supplying tents, food and drink, the tolling of bells, the firing of canon, and the furnishings for the accommodations of the general and his entourage. The more than 100,000 visitors who attended the week’s festivities and events held between August 24 and 30, 1824, far exceeded Boston’s entire population of 55,000. For the grand entrance procession, Lafayette was seated in an open barouche drawn by four white horses and accompanied by Governor William Eustis and Mayor Josiah Quincy. When they reached Boston Common, twenty-five hundred schoolchildren stood in well-ordered ranks, each with a white sash imprinted with a miniature portrait of the hero (Fig. 5). Local merchants rushed to cash in on the fervor by producing souvenirs, including ribbons and women’s gloves printed with the general’s portrait (Fig. 6). Formal speeches at the State House lasted until late in the day when Lafayette finally retired to his appointed lodgings across the street. The furnishings supplied for seven rooms in the four-story brick house must have been among the finest ever assembled in Boston. Among the receipts for purchases by the city are two signed and receipted invoices from Isaac Vose & Son, both dated just days before Lafayette’s arrival, and only six weeks after the date of the visit was finalized. One two-page bill lists seventy-eight pieces of furniture and indicates the rooms they were to furnish. Also listed by room are other items Vose supplied: two large mirrors, candle branches and eighteen fancy lamps, most with “ground moon shades” (Fig. 7). 4 A second receipt to the city from the firm details three “French Bedsteads” and four wall brackets to support some of the lamps (Fig. 8). No other receipts for furniture are included in the folders, so Vose apparently had the exclusive contract. All would have been made in the Vose shop while the leading Boston cabinetmaker Thomas Seymour was foreman of the workshop. The short six-week period the workmen had to make these suites of furniture suggests much of it was probably supplied from the firm’s existing inventory but with the upholstery and gilding added to enhance the treatment of each room. Vose’s superb “Rose Wood Couch coverd [ sic ] with Crimson plush,” “14 Rose Wood Chairs,” and two armchairs “covered with d o [ditto]” were in the French style. Among all known Vose-made furniture, the couch is one of only three pieces with gilt carvings. Fig. 2: Jean Marie Leroux after Ary Scheffer, Lafayette, Paris, 1824. Engraving, H. 32, W. 25 inches. Lafayette considered this the best image of him and brought several copies with him to give to friends during his grand tour of the United States. Copies were also sold in Boston and other cities the French hero visited. This print, in its original frame, bears the label of Xenophon H. Shaw, “Looking Glass & Picture Frame Manufacturer” of Salem, Mass. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts (3.30). Photo by David Bohl. Fig. 3: Club House, woodcut, in Ballou’s Pictorial, May 26, 1855 (Vol. VIII, no. 21). The house built by Thomas Amory in 1804 and rented by the city of Boston for use as Lafayette’s lodgings was noted in one newspaper as the “most suitable abode which could be selected for the Guest of the nation.” It was strategically chosen for its location opposite the State House and Boston Common, which could accommodate the throngs of people who attended the numerous public events, parades, and addresses. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/