The restoration Joseph Hartford Museum

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2001 by Wilson H. Faude

In 1792 the Connecticut legislature authorized the building of a new State House in Hartford. It was designed by Charles Bulfinch (1763--1844) and was his first public commission, followed by the Massachusetts State House (completed in 1798) and the Maine State House (completed in 1829).

The two-story brick and brownstone Hartford State House was completed in 1796 in time for the legislature to open its spring session there on May 11. In addition to chambers for the senate, the house of representatives, and the courts, there were offices for the governor, comptroller, treasurer, secretary of state, and the school fund (board of education). On the third floor were committee rooms.

In May 1796 Joseph Steward petitioned the legislature to use "the East upper Space Chamber in the State House for a painting room." [1] Permission was granted, and on June 6, 1796, Steward advertised in the Hartford Connecticut Courant that he "Informs the public that he has opened a Painting Room in the State House."

Joseph Steward was born in Upton, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1780 from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and then studied painting. He also studied for the ministry under the Reverend Dr. Levi Hart (1838--1908) of Preston, Connecticut. By 1786 he was licensed to preach. In 1789 he married Sarah Mosley of Hampton, Connecticut, where he served as an associate minister. Steward's health was poor; according to the records he suffered from "bodily disorders." [2] In 1796 he moved to Hartford, and the following year was admitted as a deacon of the First Church of Hartford. With the Reverend Dr. Nathan Strong of the First Church of Hartford and the Reverend Abel Flint of the Second Congregational Church he compiled The Hartford Selection of Hymns in 1799, which had eight editions by 1821. However, his ill health did not permit him to serve as the pastor of a church. [3]

The painting room in the State House was not a success. The public may have agreed with William Dunlap's assessment of Steward's work:

Mr. Steward painted wretched portraits about and before this time in Hartford, Connecticut. This gentleman had been (as I was informed at the time I saw him and his pictures) a clergyman. What turned him from the cure of men's souls to the characturing of their bodies I never learned. [4]

Steward closed the painting room, and on January 30, 1797, he advertised in the Connecticut Courant that he "Takes the liberty to inform the public that he proposes, as soon as it can be accomplished, to make such a collection of natural curiosities and paintings as he hopes will gratify the curious."

In May 1797 Steward successfully petitioned to use his former painting room "for depositing Paintings, and Curiosities and Practicing the art he professeth as per Memorial on file." [5] In the June 5, 1797, issue of the Connecticut Courant he informed the public that his collection of paintings, and some other natural and artificial curiosities, are exhibited in the East upper space chamber in the State House....If any are disposed to benefit the Museum, it is proposed to have in it a catalogue of their names, with the particular donation of each, unless directed to the contrary.

Over the course of time the museum had a number of names: Joseph Steward's Museum, the Hartford Museum, the Museum, and the Hartford Gallery of Fine Arts.

Steward's decision to change his painting rooms into a museum of paintings and curiosities must, at least in part, have reflected his need to support his family As his health did not permit him to serve as a fulltime minister and his painting talents were not highly remunerative, he needed to find another means of livelihood. The popularity of curiosities is evident from the listings in the newspapers of the period. It should be noted that "curiosity" then signified an object of intellectual importance, just as articles headlined "To The Curious" acknowledged the reader's intellectual curiosity. A typical notice so headlined in the Connecticut Courant of June 22, 1789, proclaimed, "To be seen at Mr. Frederick Bull's in Hartford, on the 22d and 23d of June, instant, Two Camels, Male and Female, lately imported from Arabia."

While Steward's health did not permit him to travel, he must have known of Peale's Museum, founded by Charles Willson Peale in Philadelphia in 1782. It, too, had started as a painting room, but on July 7, 1786, Peale issued the following public appeal in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser:

Mr. Peale, ever desirous to please and entertain the Public, will make a part of his House a Repository for Natural Curiosities--The Public he hopes will thereby be gratified in the sight of many of the Wonderful Works of Nature which are now closeted but seldom seen....on each piece will be inscribed the place from whence it came, and the name of the Donor, unless forbid, with such other information as may be necessary. [6]

Peale sought and received donations for his museum. One of the many distinguished individuals who responded to his appeal was George Washington, who in 1787 sent him a pair of stuffed Chinese pheasants. [7]