Elizabeth Hart Colt: collector, art patron, and civic leader

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1996 by William Hosley

In the house was furniture designed for them by the New York City cabinetmaker Leon Marcotte (1824-1891) and furniture made from Connecticut's cherished Charter Oak by Colt's German wood carvers.(2) But the Colts dreamed of doing more than gratifying their own desires.

Samuel Celt's philanthropic vision included founding a technical college, creating a museum and public park, and completing an industrial and commercial empire that, had he lived, might have made Hartford "the principal center in the United States of manufacturing ordnance" complete with "foundries, forges and workshops to produce everything necessary to equip an army, or navy, or fortress."(3)

During the forty-three years of her widowhood Elizabeth Colt gained the reputation of being the most prolific art patron, philanthropist, and institution builder in Hartford's history. Her first project, conceived before her husband's death, was to commission Henry Barnard, a renowned writer and educator, to supply the text for Armsmear: The Home, The Arm, and The Armory of Samuel Colt, A Memorial, a lavishly illustrated, four-hundred-page biographical profile of her husband and his world. It was the first book about a contemporary American mansion and its occupant, as well as a work of art and literature in its own right. The illustrations were by Nathaniel err (b. 1822) and Harry Fenn,(4) and the British-trained C. E. Matthews was commissioned to provide several styles of elaborate bindings for the five hundred copies printed [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IV OMITTED]. Armsmear was hailed as the "most splendid Book...that was ever printed in this country,"(5) and was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris. As the first copies arrived for Christmas 1866, the family estimated that the book had cost today's equivalent of $400,000, or about $800 a copy. Elizabeth Colt distributed the book privately to friends and politicians over the years.(6)

In December 1863 Colt embarked on the first phase of her campaign to create a private picture gallery by writing to her friend and former neighbor Frederic Edwin Church, then at the peak of his fame as an artist, thanking him for communicating her wishes to Charles Loring Elliott, who began a monumental portrait of Sam Colt later that year [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Colt supplied photographs of her husband, chose what mementos to represent,(7) and suggested design details for the frame. Elliott had nearly finished the picture when he came to Hartford in February 1865,(8) and his patron, delighted with his work, commissioned an equally grand portrait of herself and son Caldwell [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED], which Elliott completed during a two-month stay in Hartford.(9) It shows Colt holding a prayer book, while her son clutches the pull string on a toy cannon, one of Sam's prized relics of the Mexican War (1846-1848). The painting captures the opulence and maternal affection of Sam Colts widow at the moment she embarked on her philanthropic career. Hartford newspapers boasted that "the portraits executed by Mr. Elliot in this city" were "the finest in existence," and proved "that our country is hastening to the front rank in the arts."(10)

In 1865 Colt became one of the first subscribers to Hartford's new rural cemetery Cedar Hill, where she, her husband, and their four children are buried.(11) Cedar Hill was designed by Jacob Weidenmann (1829-1893), a Swiss-born landscape designer, on an open-field plan. It was described in 1865 as the "Greenwood Cemetery of New England," featuring three hundred acres of "smooth-shaven verdant lawns,...willowy vales,...[and] leafy slopes."(12)

The Colt family monument [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED] adorned the cover of Cedar Hill's first annual report. Elizabeth Colt had commissioned the monument in 1864 from James Batterson of Hartford,(13) who had first advertised a "rare...rose granite" from "the celebrated quarries at Peterhead...Scotland" in 1861.(14) However, there is no evidence that he found any takers for this stone before Elizabeth Colt, and certainly none on so grand a scale. The Colt monument, which cost in 1864 an estimated $25,000, played a significant role in creating Battersons thriving market for rose granite monuments.(15)

The Colt monument set the pace for the generation of monuments that epitomize Hartford's gilded age. The twenty-five-foot-tall bronze-mounted red-granite plinth, column, and capital in the Egyptian style is topped by a seven-foot-tall bronze figure of Gabriel, the angel of the Resurrection, commissioned from the American expatriate sculptor Randolph Rogers and cast at the royal foundry in Munich, Germany. Batterson reportedly modeled the shaft on examples "found among the ruins of the grand temple at Karnac" and the secondary columns on "an ancient temple at Luxor."(16)

Towering alone over the newly landscaped grounds of the cemetery, the Colt family monument's "massive proportions" corresponded "with the power and energy" of Sam Colt.(17) On its base was affixed the Colt-Jarvis coat of arms in bronze surmounted by a rampant colt and engraved underneath with the words chosen by Elizabeth Colt to describe Sam: "a devoted husband...a steadfast and generous friend" whose "fame...at home and abroad...won honor and contributed largely to the prosperity of his fellow citizens, and of his native city, which he loved." The monument was both a tribute to Sam and a bold affirmation of his wife's reputation as a patron of art.