Man with Dwight's Hymns

Date1830

Artist Horace Rockwell (1808-1877)

MediumWatercolor, graphite, and gilt on paper (est. wove)

DimensionsPrimary Support: 21 3/8 x 18in. (54.3 x 45.7cm) and Framed: 26 1/2 x 23 x 2 13/16in.

Credit LineBequest of Eleanor M. Gordon

Object number2005.300.2

DescriptionA half-length portrait of a seated man who is turned three-quarters to the left. He occupies a side chair, of which only the ears of the rear stiles are visible. In his raised proper left arm, he holds an open book. He wears a dark blue coat, white waistcoat, white collar, and white neckcloth. He has brown eyes. His dark brown hair is brushed forward on the sides and upwards on top of his head. The background is an overall blue wash, and separate, inscribed pieces of paper are adhered in the upper corners of the composition.
The frame in which the portrait was received in August 2005 is a modern replacement, a 2 5/8-inch scoop molded natural pine frame with gilded liner.
Label TextThis portrait and its companion are Horace Rockwell's only known surviving works on paper. (His only other recorded work on paper---a miniature portrait of Lucien P. Ferry---was destroyed in the 1920s and is known only from a photogravure illustration of it).
The 1830 pair are also the earliest recorded examples of Rockwell's work and are assumed to have been executed in Connecticut, which is where Rockwell's wife was born. (He may have lived there for a time, as well). But little is known of the artist's life there and in New York and Pennsylvania prior to his immigration to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1836 or 1837. Most of his recorded paintings were done in Indiana.
The volume of "Dwight's Hymns" in the sitter's hands is thought to refer to Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), a graduate, tutor, and ---from 1795 to 1817---chaplain and president of Yale College. In 1801, Dwight revised Isaac Watts's Psalms, creating a volume known unofficially as "Dwight's Watts." In it appear 33 hymns of Dwight's own creation, the text of one being Psalm 137. (One musicologist, William Reynolds, suggests that this particular work of Dwight's is "the earliest American hymn that remains in common usage").
InscribedOn a small, separate piece of paper adhered to the upper left corner of the face of the primary support, in script in watercolor or thin bluish-gray ink, is, "Painted by H. Rockwell,/Decr 22nd 1830".
Similarly inscribed on another separate piece of paper adhered to the upper right corner is, "Aged 39 years."
Hand lettered in block style capitals on the spine of the book in the sitter's hand in yellow watercolor is, "DWIGHT'S/HYMNS."
A modern inscription on the paper dust cover on the back reads, "This portrait has been refit & surface cleaned (dusted only) on/8/6/90/The glass used is museum glass by True Vue (TM)/It is 100% ultraviolet filtering & is optically/coated to reduce glare. An acrylic spacer/has been incorporated to separate art from/glass/Peter Miller CPF/Beaux Arts Gallery".
ProvenanceThis portrait and its companion were delivered to CWF 8/29/2005 by Franics ("Frank") Lobdell Reynolds, Jr., brother of CWF's source/bequeather, Mrs. Clifford Gordon (nee Eleanor Margaret Reynolds)(1926-2005). Upon delivery, Frank Reynolds relayed the following oral history on the portraits:
The portraits were found, rolled up and stored in a trunk, in a barn on property occupied by Reynolds's father, Francis Lobdell Reynolds, Sr. (1896-1968), the property being located on Ridgebury Road in Ridgebury, Connecticut. Although this property had been in the family, the house there was only built ca. 1885. Reynolds, Jr., speculates that ancestor John Lobdell and his wife were the first family members to occupy the property. Only when the Ridgebury proprty was sold about 1937 were the portraits discovered. They were then moved to Reynolds, Sr.'s new home in Stratford, Connecticut.
When Reynolds, Sr., moved to Florida about 1960, the two portraits were acquired by his daughter, Eleanor Margaret Reynolds Gordon, CWF's source. N. B. Reynolds, Jr., noted that, at the time of this move, many family papers were burned by a well-intentioned but misguided sister of his father's.
It is not clear whether the two portraits were framed prior to 1990, when they were placed in the modern frames in which they were received in 2005, according to modern inscriptions on the dust covers.