Francis Martin Drexel : his life and work

Francis Martin Drexel (see Pls. I, II, and IX) was an unusual figure for his time, a success in the widely disparate fields of art and banking. As a young artist in Austria, he escaped to Switzerland in 1809 to avoid conscription into Napoleon's forces and emigrated to the United States in 1817, seeking greater opportunities as a portrait painter. He exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and traveled to South America and Mexico to paint portraits. However, his career changed dramatically after the charter of the Second Bank of the United States expired in 1836, creating the financial panic of 1837. In 1838 he used the currency expertise he had developed in his foreign travels to found the Drexel Bank in Philadelphia, which became Drexel and Company, a cornerstone of American finance, funding the Union in the Civil War and later the Mexican War and American railroads.

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Drexel's life was intriguing, an artist-turned-banker, he imparted to his family a love for art and the importance of financial responsibility. Details of his life have been preserved by Drexel descendants, (1) who comprise a who's who of well-known American families: Biddles, Bouviers, Cadwaladers, Dukes, Ingersolls, Van Pelts, Van Rensselaers and Whartons. Documents have also been maintained by Drexel University in Philadelphia in the Drexel University archives and the Drexel Collection. (2)

According to Drexel's memoir, "Life and Travels of Francis M. Drexel," written later in life for the benefit of his children, he was born to Magdalena Wilhelm and Franz Josef Drexel on Easter Sunday, April 7, 1792, in Dornbirn, Austria, in the western state of Vorarlberg in a rustic valley east of the Rhine River, surrounded by Alpine mountains and the Bregenzer Forest. (3) The Drexels had been farmers since the seventeenth century. Francis Martin's father was the first of the Drexels to leave the agrarian world for business, becoming one of Dornbirn's most prosperous merchants. (4) Francis Martin painted the Family Portrait in Figure 1 in Austria in 1815, showing his father on the left, his mother, his sister Suzanne, his brother, Anton, and himself on the right, along with a pet dog under the table. The elder Drexel, eager for his son to be versed in foreign languages so that he could continue the family business, sent Francis Martin at the age of eleven in 1803 to the Convent della Madonna in Saronno, Italy, between Milan and Como, to study Italian and French. Thirteen months later, Napoleon's Austrian campaign nearly impoverished the Drexel family, and Francis Martin was forced to return to Dornbirn. By the end of December 1805, the Treaty of Pressburg between Austria and France ceded Vorarlberg and Tyrol, among other states, to Bavaria, then under Napoleonic rule. With his foreign studies now interrupted, at the age of fourteen Francis Martin was apprenticed to an artist in the village of Wolfurt, five miles north of Dornbirn. He studied with the artist for three years and might have stayed longer had it not been for the heavy taxation imposed by the occupying French and Bavarian forces. This economic burden pushed the residents to revolt, with the elder Drexel functioning as an officer among the insurgents and Francis Martin participating as well.

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The success of the uprising was short-lived, and France took revenge on the rebels. In 1809 all able-bodied boys and men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five were required to register for service in Napoleon's army, with a high probability of having to fight against their fellow countrymen. The elder Drexel at forty-six was exempt from the draft but Francis Martin was seventeen and required to register. To avoid doing so, on August 9, 1809, he left Austria late at night, following arrangements made by his father for a Swiss ferryman to assist him and another young man across the Rhine into Switzerland. He then traveled through Italy and France for five years, barely making a living painting houses and coaches. He begged for food and shelter. Like his companions, he was addicted to card playing and lost his present and future wages. In April 1810 he renounced gambling and chose new lodgings and new companions. He received an increase in his wages and vowed to be economical from that time forward. In the summer of 1814, he visited Lausanne where he received formal art training from a professor at a local art school.

The downfall of Napoleon in October 1814 brought Dornbirn back to Austria, and general amnesty made it safe for Francis Martin to return home. Although he received commissions in Austria, Italy, and France, he believed there would be more opportunities for a portrait artist in the United States. In 1817 he arranged for passage down the Rhine to Amsterdam en route to the ship John of Baltimore, which sailed from Texel in the Netherlands on May 18, 1817. Seventy-two days later, on July 28, 1817, the ship docked at the foot of Callowhill Street in Philadelphia. Immediately upon his arrival, Drexel took a letter of introduction to an artist named "Reider," probably Alexander Rider at Seventh and Spruce Streets. Rider was sick and sent Drexel to the Columbian Hotel on Bread Street, near the Delaware River, owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Gottlieb Grundloch (or Grunlock). Drexel stayed for six weeks, and his Portrait of Mrs. Gottlieb Grundloch (Pl. III) is the first likeness he painted in the United States. (5) He set up a studio at 131 South Front Street but quickly moved to 171 Chestnut Street, where he advertised on November 5, 1818: