Portraits in miniature: Anna Claypoole Peale and Caroline Schetky

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2002 by Anne Sue Hirshorn

(6.) For example, the designs of Lady Diana Beauclerk (1734-1808) were initially popularized by Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795).

(7.) Anna Wells Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1807- 1870, rev. ed. (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 196, 197.

(8.) Analectic Magazine, vol. 14 (July 18t9), p. 1.

(9.) Caroline's brother John Christian Schetky, for example, executed Illustrations of Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel consisting of twelve views...on the rivers Botlnvick, Etrrick, Yellow, Tiviot and Tweed (London, 1810).

(10.) Rubens Peale, Baltimore, to Franklin Peale, September 11, 1822, B P314 (Rubens Peale papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia).

(11.) Quoted in Schetky, The Schetky Family, p. 205.

(12.) "Diary of J[ohn] B[arton] Longacre, July 29, 1825," cited in Theodore B. Bolton, Early American Portrait Painters in Miniature (F.F. Sherman, New York, 1921), pp. 140-141.

(13.) Richardson was a charter member of the Haydn and Handel Society, founded in 1815 in Boston, and he was known for his fine baritone voice (H. Earle Johnson, Musical Interludes in Boston, 1795-1830 [Columbia University Press, New York, 1943], p. 88, nn. 252 and 253). Caroline played the organ in the Brattle Street Church in Boston, where her husband was a member of the choir for several years. See also John Adams Vinton, The Richardson Memorial (Portland, Maine, 1876), p. 125.

(14.) The sitter, Anne Hasseltine Judson (1789- 1826), was the wife of a Baptist missionary to Burma. The painting is unlocated today.

(15.) Two editions of the 1828 catalogue were published. The reviewer worked from the first edition, which listed "262. The Studious Youth" (p. 8). In the second edition, the entry appeared as "262. Master Appleton" (p. 7). See Catalogue of the Second Exhibition of Paintings in The Athenaeum Gallery (Boston 1828), A copy is in the archives of the Boston Athenaeum. The picture in question may be Edward Appleton, illustrated in Robin Bolton Smith, Portrait Monatures in Private Collections (National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1976), p. 7.

(16.) These comments appear in newspaper clippings in John Neagle's Scrap Book, vol. 1 (1821-1833), n.p. in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Neagle's handwritten comment reads: "The following eight numbers on the fine arts, appeared in Boston 1828, written by J. Smith, artist." His comment about the Schetky picture is under the heading "No. 252.--Mr. Schetky."

(17.) The independent conservator Carol Aiken and Robin Jaffee Frank, the associate curator of American painting at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, have generously shared their observations on the portrait miniature of Ellen Emerson. I am also grateful to Lydia Dufour, the reference librarian at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York City, for documentation of the Tucker-Nash collection. I would also like to thank Amy Trout of the New Haven Colony Historical Association for information about a Boston Schetky portrait. A portrait of Ellen Tucker Emerson was initially published in Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston, 1909-1914), vol.2, p. 136.