Grief (Portrait of Isabel Colman *)
Artist
Launt Thompson
(American, 1833 - 1894)
Dateca. 1862
Mediumsculpture; Plaster
Dimensions17 x 15 5/8 in.
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Emigh
Terms
Object number1976.106
DescriptionAlthough long known simply as "Joy and Grief", these plasters are almost certainly versions of two "marble medallions" that Thompson showed at National Academy of Design in 1860 under the titles "L'Allegra" and "La Penserosa".(1) The titles were taken from John Milton's poems of about 1631, "L'Allegra" and "Il Penserosa," the latter being an especially popular source of inspiration for nineteenth-century artists. These works (or versions of them) were offered for sale that year at the annual exhibition of the Artists' Fund Society, where they were described and grouped as "a pair";(2) and one of them (or a cast) was shown in 1860 at the Young Men's Association in Troy, New York, lent by its owner C. H. Ludington.It was not unusual for a sculptor to create pairs of reliefs, whether portraits or allegories. The popularity of such images in the 1850s was undoubtedly due in part to the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen's "Day and Night" (1815). Thorwaldsen was one of the most famous European artists in the first half of the nineteenth century, and his relief pair was well known on both sides of the Atlantic, from marble and plaster replicas and from engravings.(3)
The family of the original owners of Thompson's reliefs has traditionally believed that "Joy and Grief" were based on portraits of Marian and Isabel Colman, respectively. The girls were twins and daughters of Samuel Colman, a bookseller and publisher in Portland, Maine, and his wife, Pamela Atkins Chandler. While the children were still young, the Colmans moved to New York, where their father was known as "one of the first tasteful dealers in fine engravings in New York."(4) The elder Colman published the poems of Nathaniel Willis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others, in volumes illustrated with fine engravings by leading American artists. The firm's offices on Broadway became a gathering place for artists. It is not surprising that Colman's son, also named Samuel, became an artist and, eventually, a well-known member of the Hudson River School of landscape painters.
It was undoubtedly through the younger Samuel that Launt Thompson was introduced to the Colman family. When Thompson arrived in New York in 1858, he took rooms in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which was at the center of artistic life in New York for much of the second half of the nineteenth century. Thompson certainly knew Colman by 1861, when he mentioned him in a letter,(5) but it is very likely that the two artists had met earlier, probably shortly after Thompson's arrival in New York.
The Colman sisters were amateur artists themselves and were frequent participants in events organized by their brother and his artist friends.(6) In 1856, for example, when Samuel Colman arranged for a group of painters, including Daniel Huntington and Asher B. Durand, to gather for the summer at his Jackson, New Hampshire, studio, the sisters went along. And it was there that Marian met the painter Aaron Draper Shattuck, whom she later married. If tradition is correct, Thompson gave Marian Colman the two relief sculptures as a wedding gift. The marriage took place in 1860, and the reliefs were likely to have been created shortly before, probably in 1858 or 1859.
Given Thompson's training under Erastus Dow Palmer, who was one of the most proficient and prolific users of the relief format, it is predictable that he would have investigated the technique and been successful at it. In 1859, shortly after he arrived in New York, a writer for the "Crayon" noted that Thompson was "producing beautiful medallion heads"; and in 1865 a visitor to the sculptor's rooms in the Studio Building wrote that "arranged along the wall, are ten or twelve medallion portraits, also in plaster."(7) Writing at about that same time, Henry Tuckerman remarked on Thompson's "remarkable talent for medallion portraits," which, "upon his taking up his residence in New York, in November 1858," brought him "ample employment."(8)
DBD
Bibliography:
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "Among the Studios, II," "Our Young Folks" 1 (December 1865): 775-78; Henry T. Tuckerman, "Book of the Artists" (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1867), pp. 594-95; Elizabeth K. Allen, "'Picnic' "Drawings by the American Sculptor Launt Thompson," "Master Drawings" 35 (summer 1997): 115-41.
1 . "Catalogue of the Thirty-Fifth Annual Exhibition" (New York: National Academy of Design, 1860), nos. 107, 115.
2. James L. Yarnall and William H. Gerdts, "The National Museum of American Art's Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues from the Beginning through the 1876 Centennial Year", 6 vols. (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986), vol 5, pp. 3505-6.
3 . Plaster casts of Thorwaldsen's sculptures were in the collection of the National Academy of Design by the 1840s (National Academy of Design, New York, Archives).
4 . Tuckerman, "Book of the Artists", p. 559.
5 . Thompson to Jervis McEntee, June 14, 1861, Jervis McEntee Papers, 1850-1905, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel D30.
6 . In 1860 they both showed pencil drawings of flowers at the National Academy exhibition in which Thompson's two relief sculptures were shown "Catalogue of the Thirty-Fifth Annual Exhibition" [New York: National Academy of Design, 1860], nos. 17, 127).
7 . "Sketchings: Domestic Art Gossip," "Crayon" 6 (January 1859): 25; Aldrich, "Among the Studios," p. 776.
8 . Tuckerman, "Book of the Artists", p. 594.
The family of the original owners of the reliefs traditionally believed that this roundel was based on the portrait of Isabel Colman, daughter of Samuel Colman, who was a bookseller and publisher in Maine. Though it was not uncommon for pieces in a pair to be associated with some deeper allegorical meaning, the sitter in the portrait does not look particularly bereaved. She bears a rather plain expression and even appears, in some aspects, to be slightly smiling. The closest indication of the sitter's grief comes from her overall attire. She is concealed by her clothing, far more so than her sister in the matching roundel, "Joy". Perhaps covering herself as much as possible was a way to show her humility and respect for her lost loved one.
On View
Not on view
