Daniel F Wentworth

Daniel F Wentworth (1849-1934)

“A Hartford Biography”

© Gary W. Knoble, 2014

Daniel F. Wentworth could be called a quintessential old Yankee painter. Born in Maine, the descendent of English ancestors who settled there in 1629, he was a fixture on the Hartford art scene for more than 50 years. Largely self-taught, he painted hundreds of beautiful, if somewhat traditional landscapes.

He was born November 1, 1849 in Norway, Maine. His father was George B. Wentworth, a descendent of Elder William Wentworth who settled in Maine in 1620. His mother was Comfort Fisher Wentworth. His family apparently moved to Hartford, Connecticut when he was young as his Who’s Who listings show him as having been schooled in the Hartford public schools. In 1874, he married Sarah O. Cooley of Hartford. They had one child, Gilbert Rogers Wentworth who was probably born around 1888 since he was a Freshman at Trinity College in 1904-05.

While in his 20’s, Wentworth was a music instructor, frame maker, and gilder. In his Who’s Who entries from 1909 and 1916, probably written by himself, he is said to have been a “Painter and teacher at Hartford since 1876”. In 1876 he opened a frame business on Main Street in Hartford that was located between Vorce’s frame shop and gallery and the Charter Oak Building, which then stood between the Travelers tower and the Wadsworth Atheneum. This early venture was not very successful. He declared bankruptcy only about a year later. His brother George, who was a “crayon artist”, signed the bankruptcy papers. Wentworth appears to have left Hartford for about 10 years. Bankruptcy at the time was a very serious affair. Some records show he was an organist in Meriden around this time.

In 1884-85 he studied art at a Munich Academy in Bavaria Germany. There is no record of his studying with any other teachers. He was already actively painting at the time. There is a painting of his entitled “The Grist Mill in Farmington”, dated 1884, in the collection of the Farmington Historical Society.

In 1886 he returned to Hartford and opened a studio in the Goodwin Building on Hayes Street announcing himself as a drawing instructor and painter. This time he was determined to succeed. He ran newspaper ads exhorting the readers to, “Come buy my paintings now, before fly time.” (He was a fisherman, like Thomas Sedgwick Steele, who he undoubtedly knew.) Shortly after opening his studio, he and Charles Ethan Porter held a joint auction of their paintings. As was common with the Hartford painters at the time, he moved his studio often. In 1887 he is listed as being in the Charter Oak Building just down the street. The Greers Hartford City Directory of 1903 lists his business address as 904 Main Street, where William Gedney Bunce and Charles Noel Flagg also had their studios. Around this time he would have met James Britton and James Goodwin McManus where were then young students of Flagg at the Art Students League of Hartford. The art world of Hartford in the early 1900’s was concentrated in the few blocks on Main Street between the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Cheney Building (now called the Brown Thomson Building). There were plenty of opportunities for everyone to socialize in the local pubs. In this entry written in 1925 but recalling earlier times, James Britton describes what must have been a typical scene:

“Leon Greenberg (was) one of the café men. During the war he kept on Trumbull St. opposite the Allyn House. McM (McManus) used to be in there every night standing at the bar. Joe Kress who had a studio in the building upstairs was also a regular. Dan Wentworth used to stop in at noon and eve on his way home for his glass of port wine of California which Greenberg used to draw from small varnished kegs reposing on the shelf behind the bar.” (Misc. Volume 4, page 46)

For eight years he was the organist at the Park Congregational Church near Bushnell Park, but in 1909 he moved to the 1st Presbyterian Church. From at least 1909 to 1916 he lived at 7 Regent Street in Hartford’s West End, a neighbor of Edith Briscoe Stevens, then a young girl. Britton describes the downtown neighborhood of his studios as it was at the time:

“near the Center Church there had been a narrow street with old delapitated (sic) buildings inhabited by negroes. All the buildings on the north side were later torn down, the street widened and the centre church plot extended to the side walk with a high ornamental iron fence. Old Centre Cemetary (sic) in back of the church which had been shut in by the old buildings then opened up to the daylight and a wide pleasant street extended from main to the Little Park River (Gold Street). At the park side stood the Hotel Heublein for long the best hotel in the town. Later Highland Court Hotel was built in Windsor Ave. and the Hotel Bond on Asylum St. The old Batterson bldg where the Art League was quartered in the huge loft for ten years 1895-1905 was made into the Hotel Garde. The Park Methodist Church where Dan Wentworth the painter played the organ occupied the opposite corner to the Garde. Bushnell Park took up the South side of the street offering a long vista to the State Capitol rising on the hill.” (Misc Volume 4, page 65)

In 1910 Wentworth participated in the founding of the Connecticut Academy of Art. He became President of the Academy after Flagg’s death in 1916. Henry Cooke White became Vice President, Ralph Russell Seymour, Treasurer, and James Goodwin McManus, Secretary. Wentworth was later named President Emeritus.

In 1911 he was asked by Britton to sit for a portrait, which Britton kept and often looked at while writing of the old times.

As late as 1920, Wentworth had his studio in the Ballerstein Building, which he shared with Flagg’s Art Students League.

Unlike some of the other Harford painters who were very active in New York, and Old Lyme, Wentworth usually stayed close to home. He never exhibited at the National Academy, or in the major New York Galleries, but he did show at the Brooklyn Art Club, the American Watercolor Society, and the Boston Art Club. One of his paintings won a Connecticut Academy prize.

Around 1933 Wentworth’s health began to decline. Britton ponders his own and Wentworth’s declining health while looking at his portrait of Wentworth. In the first entry James Stevens, father of the Hartford painter Edith Briscoe Stevens is visiting to thank Britton for writing an article about his daughter who had taken her own life shortly before.

May 31, 1932

(James Stevens) “Looks around and sees the head of Wentworth. Wants it in the light. I put it out for him and explain how it was injured by the sunlight beating on it several days while I had it placed in the window to bleach. He says, “that’s a fine picture of Wentworth as he used to look. He was a neighbor of mine. (Wentworth lived at 7 Regent Street and Stevens lived across the street at 6 Regent Street) I know him well. I have several of his pictures. He is very much failed now. But your picture is fine. I am going to see if we can’t buy it for the Academy.” (The Academy didn’t buy it. Now, in 2014, it is still owned by Britton’s grand daughters.) (Misc. Volume 12, page 26)

A few months later he looked at the painting again.

March 21, 1933

“Here in front of me I have my portrait of Dan Wentworth done in 1911 when Dan was still in his prime. It shows him full of health ruddy with the good wine he used to take at Greenberg’s before prohibition shut off the good wine. Wentworth is now an emaciated bloodless old man but clings on to life. C. (Carol) says he had a pleasant little picture in the Conn. Exhibition.” (Misc. Volume 14, page 69]

Around this time, Wentworth moved to Whittlesey Avenue in New Milford where he died on May 31,1934. Strangely, his death must not have been announced by the Hartford newspapers since Britton was a avid reader of the papers for news of the local art scene and only learned of Wentworth’s death a year later from his wife who had attended the 25th exhibition of the Connecticut Academy and noticed a wreath on the frame of one of Wentworth’s paintings denoting that, “the old gentleman must have passed on – we had not news of it.”

Although there had been some ill feelings between Britton and Wentworth having to do with Connecticut Academy politics, Britton made his peace in two lengthy passages from his unpublished autobiography.

Autobiography (page 10)

My picture of Daniel Wentworth which is characterized by Wentworth’s successor in the presidential office (James McManus) is “a great one”. Represents a man whose character might be called typical of the subservient nature of the academical brood, not only in Connecticut but everywhere. Wentworth, a name in history. Our Daniel was a landscape painter, a small man who looked up from an humble trudge, with a somewhat seeing eye and a guarded smile. He bided his time, truckling to a man he hated (C. Flagg), hopeful that the Leader’s mantle (of the Connecticut Academy) would fall on him. And it did of course, and I celebrated the event by writing for the Hartford “Times” my exciting article entitled, “What Ails the Connecticut Academy”.

Later on I shall quote from this feuilleton which infuriated the time-biders. Poor Wentworth how really proud he was to have me ask him to sit to be painted. My portrait of his dreaded, yet humbly-followed leader Noel Flagg, had made a furore in Hartford from its exhibition by the dealer Moyer, who pledged and unusually lively Yankee faith in my genius by making a frame for this work of mine at his own expense.

So I painted Wentworth, and as he sat he had much to say of Noel Flagg, not in compliment – just as Flagg himself had said while sitting to me for the several portraits I painted of him, much that might better not have been said. So you see, how men reveal themselves as you paint them from the life. It is not enough that they offer themselves to be probed by your vision – but they must, they must will your mind with spoken corroboration of what your eyes are finding behind their masks.

Poor Daniel. He was a Wentworth. He had the same cold eye, and stubborn, intent mild scowl as that other Wentworth who as Charles the First Earl of Strafford gave his neck to the axe.

The likeness I discovered only after my portrait of Daniel was finished. I came upon a print of Strafford’s portrait by Van Dyke – and there was “that” Wentworth looking out from 1645 exactly as my Wentworth looks out from 1911.

Autobiography (page 12)

Right now I must say further of Daniel Wentworth in all the years since I painted his portrait, 1911, I had seen little of him. He was small enough to have been greatly shocked when I expressed contempt for the society which I had done much to provide so that humble artists might be elevated, and I recall how the sad little man’s voice trembled as he took his mouse’s part in the Academy’s cabal against me. Well he is fully forgiven, poor modest man that he was. Wentworth. When McManus told me of his death last year at the age of 86, I thought how characteristic of him that he should pass from the earth so quietly that scarcely anyone should know of it. Yet he had made a diligent career painting very pleasant landscapes, playing a church organ and directing a choir for a quarter century and having worn the mantle of a presidency in the state’s society of artists. I will let the last scene concerning him be told in the language of the relator, (the quote appears to be from James McManus who acted as his pallbearer) “yes, his son, Gilbert Wentworth came to me and asked if I would act as a bearer, and get some of the artists together for the funeral. We met the body as it came from New Milford and took poor Dan to Spring Grove.” So there in the earth sleeps the mortal man, while here before me as I write breathes the canvas painted from his breathing presence. Wentworth, I salute you! Next to Noel Flagg, you were my worst enemy. And yet it was only stupidity that made you so.

Wentworth was buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford’s North End just off North Main Street

His works are in the collections of the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Mattatuck Historical Society in Waterbury, the Wethersfield Historical Society, the Wesleyan University Davison Art Center, and Storrs College.

Charles Gallery website

Cummings, Hildegard, “The Hartford Art Colony 1880-1900”, 1989, The Connecticut Gallery Inc.

Kornhauser, Elizabeth M., “American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum”

Kostoulakos, Peter, “Daniel Wentworth”, ASK/art website

Leach, Charles, “Farmington Artists and Their Times – Giverny in Conncecticut;

Part 1”,Farmington Historical Society

Marquis, Albert Nelson, Who’s who in New England: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries, 1909, Volume 1, page 991, also 1916 edition, page 1132

Trinity College Catalogue of officers and students, 1904-1905