emblems and colonial american painting

Emblems and Colonial American PaintingAuthor(s): Roland E. FleischerSource: American Art Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1988), pp. 2-35Published by: Kennedy Galleries, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1594512 .

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EMBLEMS AND COLONIAL AMERICAN PAINTING Roland E. Fleischer

L PHILADELPHIA IN 1766 the British-born painter William Williams (1727-1791) painted portraits of

the children of David Hall, the printer and partner of Benjamin Franklin. In recording the likenesses of the Hall children, Williams relied not only on his skillful hand and his accomplished sense of design but also on his knowledge of the emblematic tradition that had often been called upon since the sixteenth century to add subtle layers of meaning to the paintings of Eng- land and the Continent.

In his portrait of Deborah Hall, for example, Williams placed the girl in an impressive formal garden before a stone base which supports a pot of roses (Fig. 1). She grasps the stem of one of the roses as if to pluck it or call our attention to it. The rose, as we know, is a frequent symbol with several possible meanings in the history of art.1 In Christian iconography, for example, it can be an attribute of Mary, especially a white rose stressing her purity, while it may also be used as a vanitas symbol, reminding us of the brevity of life since all roses eventually lose their splendor. In the portrait Deborah Hall, however, we have the additional evidence of other symbols within the painting, which strongly suggest that the rose in this case is an emblem of love and alludes to Venus, the goddess of love. Therefore, while an individual emblem may have several quite different meanings, its intended meaning in each case must be derived from its context.

The emblem of the rosebush, often being plucked, was a favorite, making its appearance in several emblem books of the Renaissance and Baroque and usually stressing the thought that love has both its joy and its sorrow just as a rose has the beauty and sweetness of smell as well as the painful prick of its thorns. In the end, however, both love and the rose are worth our efforts. After first making its appearance on the Con-

tinent,2 the emblem of a Cupid selecting the rose of love appeared in English publications such as Philip Ayres's Emblemata Amatoria (or Emblems of Love) of 1683 (Fig. 2), while in an emblem book of the mid-eighteenth century entitled Emblems for the Im- provement and Entertainment of Youth, we find the rosebush carrying the same meaning, "No rose is without its thorns," but without being held or plucked.3

To strengthen the meaning, painters often included a fountain, a customary furnishing in the Gar- den of Love from the Middle Ages through the Roco- co.4 And the message was sometimes made even clearer through the fountain's sculptural motif of an amor or Cupid with a dolphin, a traditional reference to love and to Venus.s The rose as a symbol of love, relating the sitter in a general way to Venus, was popularized in England by Anthony van Dyck (1599- 1641) and Peter Lely (1618-1680). They used it sometimes with and sometimes without the motifs of the fountain and the amor with a dolphin.

Williams further supported the theme of love by entwining the roses around an arrow suggesting Cupid and by underscoring this reference to love with several others. The garden in the background, with its fountain, suggests the tradition of the Garden of Love, while the red of Deborah's dress is the color worn by the personification of Love or Charity (Caritas) in the various editions of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia.6 Fur- thermore, the sculptural relief on the stone base supporting the pot of roses depicts Apollo and Daphne, a standard reference to Chastity and one which appears as such in Emblems for the Improvement and Enter- tainment of Youth, previously mentioned (Fig. 3). Also found in the same emblem book is the unsupported vine (Fig. 4), seen here falling across the sculptural relief. The vine is a traditional emblem of love, and the unsupported vine, we read, symbolizes, "Celibacy or single Life, but more especially of a Woman unmarried ..."7 And just as the unsupported vine reinforces the theme of Chastity in the relief behind it, the pet squirrel atop the base parallels the theme of the roses above, for we find also in Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth (Fig. 5) that a squirrel taking meat from a nut exhorts our diligence and patience and reminds us that everything worthwhile in life is obtained only with effort, an equivalent to the thorns we must endure to gain the

ROLAND E. FLEISCHER, Professor of Art History at Penn- sylvania State University, is the author of "Gustavus Hes- selius and Penn Family Portraits: A Conflict Between Visual and Documentary Evidence," in THE AMERICAN ART JOURNAL (vol. xix, no. 3, 1987) as well as the catalogue, Gustavus Hesselius: Face Painter to the Middle Colonies for the recent exhibition at the New Jersey State Museum. He has also published on other topics of American colonial and Dutch seventeenth-century painting. This article is based on a paper Dr. Fleischer presented at the International Conference of Emblems held in in Glasgow, Scotland, in August, 1987.

The American Art Journal/Volume XX * Number 3 3



Fig. I. William Williams. DEBORAH HALL. 1766. Oil on canvas, 713/s x 463K". Collection, The Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsav Fund.



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Fig. 2. Engraving from Philip Ayres, Emblemata Amatoria (London, 1683), no. 17.



Fig. 3. Engraving from Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, sold by R. Ware (London, 1755), plate XXXIX, no. 2.

Fig. 4. Engraving from Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, plate X, no. 5.

sweetness and beauty of the rose. The squirrel as an emblem of patience, diligence, and perseverance appears in several other books, including those of Joachim Camerarius, George Wither, and Girolamo Ruscelli.8 And so our theme of love, accompanied by patience and perseverance, rests on a firm foundation of Chastity, a most appropriate combination of emblems in the portrait of an attractive fifteen-year-old girl.

In Williams's portrait of Hall's eleven-year-old son David, painted the same year as that of his sister Deborah, we find the subject holding a dead bird and accompanied by a dog (Fig. 6). While this suggests the European tradition of the aristocratic hunting portrait,

Fig. 5. Engraving from Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, plate LVII, no. 4.




Fig. 6. William Williams. DAVID HALL. 1766. Oil on canvas, 701 x 4518". Collection, The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware.



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Fig. 9. Engraving from Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises (Leiden, 1586), p. 62.



the bird and dog may also convey meanings of love and friendship.9 Moreover, in portraits such as this, in which the love emblems of bird and dog are conven- iently combined with the tradition of the hunting portrait, the bird is usually shown dead, a fact that does not alter its meaning.' Both the bird and dog appear as attributes of love and friendship in numerous emblem books, where they may be given either a religious or a secular connotation. For example, the dog is placed in a religious context as a companion of Love or Charity in Nicolas Reusner's Aureolorum Em- blematum Liber singularis (Fig. 7), while the bird appears in a secular context in a love emblem from the same book (Fig. 8). And within the secular realm, both the dog and the bird may represent, on the one hand, a love that is pure and innocent and, on the other, a love of the most carnal sort. The type of love intended in a painting can only be determined from the context.

The interpretation of love or friendship is strength- ened by the vine encircling and supported by the tree at the left, an emblem that became a commonplace feature in Baroque portraits. It first appeared in Al- ciati's Emblematum Liber of 1531 and reappeared in a multitude of books including Reusner's Aureolorum Emblematum Liber singularis, Whitney's A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises (Fig. 9), the 1709 Eng- lish edition of Ripa's Iconologia, and Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, in which we have also noted several other emblems reflected in the portrait of David's sister, Deborah."I

That Williams was conscious of the potential meaning of such forms within his portraits and had not merely copied them casually from European tradition is indicated not only by their consistent and logical combinations within his works but also by his significance as a literary figure, for he had written a Defo- esque novel, Mr. Penrose, which reveals his familiarity with popular literature and which was first published in 1815 in an edited version entitled Journal of Llewellin Penrose, a Seaman.12 In addition, his rec- ommendation to a youthful Benjamin West that he read works of art theory by Jonathan Richardson and Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy attests to Williams's regard of painting not as a mere craft but as an intellectual pursuit. Under these circumstances, it is certain that Williams had a knowledge of emblem books and their use in painting. In fact, Williams himself listed among the paintings he produced while in America, one which he recorded as, "An Em- blematic Piece for ye Corsican Club."'

David Hall, the father of Deborah and David, and the presumed patron of their portraits, was at least

equally familiar with emblematic literature. His frequent advertisements in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he and Benjamin Franklin jointly published, list the numerous books newly imported from London for sale at their shop. These advertisements, as well as the extant book orders from David Hall in Philadel- phia to his supplier in London, bear testimony to the popularity of emblematic literature in colonial Phila- delphia.14 Furthermore, the Franklin shop itself had published in 1751 an edition of a German emblem book by Johann Amdt, Sechs Geistreiche Biicher vom Wahren Christenthum.

Paintings, however, were neither the only nor the earliest forms to reflect the presence of the emblematic tradition in colonial America, for in the seventeenth century, via English and Dutch emblem books, emblems appeared on New England tombstones and New York silver'5, while in 1775, at the close of the colonial period, visual emblems and their mottos were used in the designs of "Continentals," the first feder- ally issued paper money. Benjamin Franklin was a member of the committee of the Continental Congress charged with arranging for the emission of the bills and owned a copy of Joachim Camerarius's Sym- bolorum & Emblematum, from which the emblems were derived.16 A few years later, Camerarius was again used as a source for the design of the Great Seal of the United States."7 The presence of emblems in colonial portraits, however, is less obvious because the emphasis placed on naturalism required greater subtlety in their use.

William Williams was also not the first painter in America to show an awareness of the emblematic tradition in his works. The German-born artist Justus Englehardt Kiuhn (d. 1717), for example, settled in Maryland in the first decade of the eighteenth century and produced portraits of children of the Darnall family (Figs. 10 and 11) that are especially interesting as forerunners of Williams's portraits of the Hall children. Within this pair of Darnall portraits, we find several of the same elements that are present in the later works. In the background of both Damall portraits is the imaginary formal garden with fountain suggestive of the Garden of Love, while Eleanor Damall rests her right hand on the head of a dog and calls our attention to it with her left. At the left edge of her portrait, ivy encircles a tree trunk or column, while to the right of center a rose rests on the balustrade next to her. In the portrait of her brother, Henry Damall III, we find the bird as well as a bow and arrow suggestive of Cupid. Together they may also be intended as reminders of hunting portraits. However, the formal garden behind Henry, and the head of what seems to be a Cupid or

The American Art Journall Volume XX * Number 3 9



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amor on the stone plinth at the right, as well as the bow and arrow instead of a fowling piece, combine to em- phasize the theme of love rather than that of the hunt.

In the portrait of Eleanor we find a new element: the two enigmatic heads which appear frontally and in relief, one above the other, at the right. The smaller one decorates the side of a vase of flowers while the much larger one stares menacingly from the stone plinth that terminates the balustrade, occupying a position similar to that of the Cupid-like head in the companion portrait. Although they seem human, I do not believe that that was Kiihn's aim. Both heads are clearly encircled by unruly hair that provides a clue to their intended appearance, for, I believe, they are the artist's attempt to depict lions' heads. This is especially evident in the smaller head, whose features are

less human and whose animal ears are appropriately placed near the top of the skull.

The very prominent position given to these heads suggests that they may be intended as more than mere decoration; they may serve an emblematic function as well. Lions, like many other forms that appear re- peatedly in emblematic literature, may have a variety of meanings. Among the several meanings a lion may possess is an ancient one relating it to earthly love and Charity,18 which, in the context of the portrait of Eleanor Darnall, seems most likely. And, beginning with the publication of Andrea Alciati's Emblematum Liber in 1531, the lion has made frequent appearances in love emblems, sometimes harnessed or restrained by Cupid to symbolize the power of love (Figs. 12 and 13). While a bird or dog may accompany the sitter in a

12 Fleischer/Emblems



Fig. 13. Engraving from Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises, p. 63.

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if Cupid then, bee of fuch mightie force, That creatures fierce, and brutifhe kinde he tames: Oh mightie:O v E, vouchf'afe to flowe remorfe, Helpe feeble man, nd pictie tender dames:

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Fig. 14. John Faber II, after Godfrey Kneller. MARY SCROPE. Mezzotint. Collection, The British Museum, London.



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portrait without disturbing the harmony of the con- ception, the presence of a naturalistic lion would nor- mally be inappropriate. For that reason the lion, like the Cupid and dolphin, usually appears as a form of sculpture. And while such lion heads did actually appear on vases and other forms as mere decoration,

we must recognize that their inclusion in this painting and the prominent position given to them, reflects a conscious choice on the part of the artist.

The meaning is clear in European portraits of ladies standing at fountains on which sculptured lions or lions' heads have replaced the more popular Cupid

The American Art JournallVolume XX * Number 3 15



Fig. 16. Anthony van Dvck. ISABELLA, LADY DE LA WARR. C. 1638. Oil on canvas, 84 x 54". Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Purchased, Marie Antoinette Evans Fund.



Fig. 17. John Durand. CATHERINE BEEKMAN. 1766. Oil on canvas, 36 x 28". Collection, The New- York Historical Society.



and dolphin. Such an example is the full-length portrait by Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723) of Mary Scrope (The Royal Collection, Hampton Court Palace), seen here in a mezzotint by John Faber II, in which water spurts forth from the mouth of a lion (Fig. 14). The theme of love is reinforced by the chameleon at the foot of the fountain, which, because of its power to change its color, refers to the necessary adaptibility of lovers and derives perhaps from an emblem of Otto van Veen19 or from a similar one by Philip Ayres, which was first published in London in 1683, less than a decade before Kneller portrayed Mary Scrope (Fig. 15).

Van Dyck's portrait of Isabella, Lady de la Warr (Fig. 16) contains the same elements of the dog, the lion's head on a vase, and the roses that we find in the portrait of Eleanor Darnall. That the dog and the lion- head vase are probable symbols in the painting by Van Dyck, rather than the personal properties of the subject, is suggested by their reappearance in exactly the same positions in his portrait of Anne Kirk.20 A com- parison of Van Dyck's Isabella, Lady de la Warr with his Portrait of a Woman (Her Majesty the Queen), shows us that the dog and lion are alternatives to and interchangeable with the love fountain.21 Roses retain their position in both works. Without attempting a discussion of Van Dyck's iconography, we can see, nevertheless, that certain forms appeared in his Eng- lish portraits more than a century before Kuihn used corresponding ones in his Maryland portraits.22

A third portrait by KiIhn is dated 1710 and depicts Ignatius Digges at the age of two-and-a-half, standing next to a fountain embellished with lions' heads spouting water and topped by a Cupid supporting a large seashell (private collection).23 The seashell, too, is a traditional symbol of Venus24 and frequently appears in the hands of aristocratic English ladies of the seventeenth century in portraits by Van Dyck, Peter Lely, and Godfrey Kneller.25 While prominent positions given to other forms within the painting, especially the parrot in the lower right and the single cherry held by young Ignatius, suggest that they, too, have meaning, their significance is less clear.26

Although both Williams and Kiuhn were Euro- pean-born and presumably familiar with the emblematic tradition before coming to America, some na- tive-born Americans also produced works with emblematic references. The finest of our colonial painters and the most interesting in his use of emblems is John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) of Boston. Joseph Badger (1708-1765), also of Boston, occasionally used emblems in his rather naive portraits, while John Durand (active 1765-1782), who was probably also born in the New World and who is documented in

New York, Connecticut, and Virginia, sometimes used emblematic references in his portraits in a man- ner that suggests a familiarity with the work of Copley.

Both Copley and Durand, along with other colonial painters, especially in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, used the motif of the girl holding or plucking the rose (Fig. 17). In his portrait of Abigail Belcher, Copley used the closely related motif of the young lady at the fountain, catching water in a shell (Fig. 18). Copley and Durand were certainly aware of the use of such motifs in portraits through the numerous prints which were made after English paintings and imported into the Colonies.27

Dating from the later 1750s and thus an early work in Copley's career is his portrait Thomas Aston Coffin, perhaps the ultimate colonial example of love or friendship emblems in a child's portrait (Fig. 19). Our young subject is literally surrounded by emblems as he holds twin cherries in his right hand, a love emblem found, for example, in Emblems for the Im- provement and Entertainment of Youth (Fig. 20), in which we learn that such twin fruits are "An Emblem of Matrimony, or true Love, in which, when two are united, none can, or ought to separate them." He grasps with his left hand the tethers of a pair of doves, traditional symbols of Venus.28 In the upper right of the portrait a vine is supported by the trunk of a tree while in the lower right is a prominently placed broad- leafed plant, that is intended as either a burdock or a mandrake plant. Both the burdock and the mandrake or mandragora have an extensive history of symbolic use in art and literature and both have a variety of potential meanings, including that of love.29 There- fore, in view of the fact that the other symbolic forms in the painting relate to love, it is highly likely that the large plant is intended to reinforce that theme.

A battledore and shuttlecock are in the lower left corner of the portrait. Playing a form of badminton or tennis was popular pastime in the eighteenth century, but the repeated references to it in portraits of children suggest that it, too, is an emblem of love or friendship. It appears as such, for example, in Jacob Cats's Spiegel van den Ouden ende Nieuwen Tijdt (Mirror of Antiquity and the Present), and reminds us that in the game of love, love, like a ball or shuttlecock, must be returned (Fig. 21). Copley, who used the motif in another portrait of a boy,30 dating also from the late 1750s, may have introduced it into portraiture on this side of the Atlantic. It was more than a decade later that William Williams used the motif in his portrait of Stephen Crossfield (Fig. 22), which repeats the vine and dog we noted in his portrait David Hall, but in which the natural bird of that earlier




Fig. 18. John Singleton Copley. ABIGAIL BELCHER. 1756. Oil on canvas, 49 x 4018". Collection, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, Gift of the Canadian International Paper Company.



Fig. 19. John Singleton Copley. THOMAS ASTON COFFIN. 1757-1759. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40". Collection, Munson-Williams- Proctor Institute, Utica, New York.



Fig. 20. Engraving from Em- blems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, plate LXI, no. 2.

Amor, ut#ila, vices exigit.

Fig. 21. Engraving from Jacob Cats, Spiegel van den Ouden ende Nieuwen Tijdt (The Hague, 1632), p. 32.

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Fig. 22. William Williams. MASTER STEPHEN CROSSFIELD. C. 1775. Oil on canvas, 52 /2 x 353'". Collection, The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, Victor Wilbour Memorial Fund, 1965.



Fig. 23. John Singleton Copley. TWO DAUGHTERS OF JOHN AND FRANCES PINCKNEY GORE. C. 1755. Oil on canvas, 29 12 x 39/12". Collection, Gore Place Society, Waltham, Massachusetts.

portrait has now been replaced by a racquet and badminton bird or shuttlecock.

Copley may also have been the first colonial painter to use the emblem, especially popular in Dutch painting of the previous century, of a bird within a cage. This emblem, to which we will return presently, symbolizes Chastity, as love is confined, restrained.3' This interpretation can be applied to portraits of young ladies, as in his painting Two Daughters ofJohn and Frances Pinckney Gore (Fig. 23).

The emblem of the squirrel gained great popularity in colonial portraiture of the third quarter of the century. In the art of Joseph Badger it appears several times, at least once as early as 1758. Copley, too,

included it in his portraits Mrs. Theodore Atkinson (Fig. 24), John Bee Holmes (Boy with Squirrel) (Fig. 25), and the portrait of his half brother, Henry Pel- ham, Boy with a Squirrel (Fig. 26), all painted in 1765, the year before the appearance of squirrels in William Williams's portrait of Deborah Hall (see Fig. 1) and John Durand's likeness of James Beekman, Jr. (Fig. 27). Copley also included a squirrel in his portrait Daniel Crommelyn Verplanck, painted in 1771 (Fig. 28). That the squirrels are usually shown cracking nuts, and are popular in emblem books, strongly suggest their having the same meaning of patience, diligence, and perseverance that we found in Deborah Hall's portrait. Whether it is Badger or Copley who

The American Art Journall Volume XX * Number3 23



Fig. 24. John Singleton Copley. MRS. THEODORE ATKINSON. 1765. Oilon canvas, 51 x40". Collection, The New York Public Library.



Fig. 25. John Singleton Copley. JOHN BEE HOLMES (BOY WITH SQUIRREL). 1765. Oil on canvas, 30112 x 28'1s". Collection, H. Richard Dietrich, Jr.

Fig. 26. John Singleton Copley. BOY WITH A SQUIRREL. 1765. Oil on canvas, 3041 x 25". Collection, Museum of Fine Arts. Boston, Anonymous Gift.



Fig. 27. John Durand. JAMES BEEKMAN, JR. 1766. Oil on canvas, 36 x 28". Collection, The New- York Historical Society.

should be credited with their sudden popularity in American portraiture is difficult to determine. Judging from the apparent dates of existing paintings, Badger would seem to have the claim to primacy.32 However, Copley was the more innovative painter, and the in- teraction between the two generally had the older Badger borrowing from him. Moreover, Copley had gained an early knowledge of European art and theory through his stepfather, Peter Pelham, and through books available to him.33 And his portraits Two Daughters of John and Frances Pinckney Gore and Abigail Belcher (see Figs. 23 and 18), painted in the

mid-1750s, attest to his early familiarity with the emblematic tradition. One further point is that the appearance of squirrels as emblems in American portraits may be unique in the eighteenth century, for in spite of their popularity in emblematic literature, squirrels appeared seldom if ever in European portraits. Certainly their popularity in colonial painting was not fore- shadowed in Europe. It is possible, therefore, that we have here an American contribution to emblematic references in portraiture.

What should be apparent at this point is that while the European portraits we have discussed are of adults,




Fig. 28. John Singleton Copley. DANIEL CROMMELYN VERPLANCK. 1771. Oil on canvas, 49/12 x 40". Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Bayard Verplanck, 1949.



Fig. 29. John Singleton Copley. MRS. METCALF BOWLER. C. 1758. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40". Collection, Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton M. Jette.



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their New World counterparts are principally of children. Although exceptions can be found, it is generally true that while the patrons of colonial portraits had their children depicted with emblematic references, usually stressing the theme of love, they were less inclined to have their own likenesses recorded in the midst of such allusions. The rich and varied emblematic tradition found in European portraits of adults in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tended to limit itself on this side of the ocean to themes of love and to portraits of children.

Among portraits of adults, however, paintings of women were much more likely than those of men to include emblematic references. Copley's portrait of Mrs. Metcalf Bowler (Fig. 29) probably contains an intended meaning through its emphasis on the bird

30 Fleischer/ Emblems



cage. In addition to its reference to Chastity, which has been noted above, a second meaning for the bird within a cage is found in portraits of married or betrothed sitters, reflecting their happiness and security through confinement, a seemingly appropriate allusion in this case in that Mrs. Bowler married in 1756, about two years before Copley painted her portrait.

The emblem of the caged bird as a voluntary prisoner of love appears in numerous books, including Jacob Cats's Silenus Alcibiadis sive Proteus (Fig. 30), P. C. Hooft's Gedichten van den Heere Pieter C. Hooft (Fig. 31), Philip Ayres's Emblems of Love (Fig. 32), and Johann Arndt's Sechs Geistreiche Biicher vom Wahren Christenthum (Fig. 33), an edition of which was published in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1751.

Although appearing less frequently, emblematic meanings are also found in portraits of men, such as in Copley's magnificent likeness of Epes Sargent (Fig. 34), a prominent merchant and justice of Gloucester. Sargent is shown leaning against a stone pedestal, supporting his massive torso on the column base with his right elbow. His powerful figure unites with the architectural underpinning to create a pyramidal form that focuses on his head and bespeaks firmness and resoluteness, while his right hand at his breast suggests sincerity. The partial column has long been a favorite reference to Samson and an attribute of the cardinal virtue of Fortitude.34 It appears as such not only in emblematic literature but also in numerous paintings and prints (Fig. 35). Given Copley's demonstrated familiarity with symbols, an intended meaning here seems certain.

While seldom finding expression in portraits of men, the emphasis on love themes in portraits of children and women is expected. Although the emblematic meanings had been more varied in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European portraiture, certainly by the mid-seventeenth century in England, it was references to love that were most common, especially in portraits of women. But what, if any, special significance the colonists attached to the love references in their children's portraits can be no more than a matter of speculation. It is likely that their attitudes were no more specific or clearly formulated in this regard than were the relationships between the emblems, on the one hand, and the individual children whose likenesses they accompanied, on the other. The theme of love could, of course, symbolize the loving relationship between the parents, who presumably commissioned the portraits and whose love is embodied in their offspring. Likewise it could express the loving nature of the children, perceiving young

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males with their bows and arrows as earthly Cupids and young girls with their fountains, shells, and roses as budding Venuses.

Why emblematic references in colonial painting should so concentrate on portraits of children is also difficult to determine. Perhaps in spite of their intended truths, emblems were regarded by the colonists as light, literary playthings, more suitable to portraits of children than to those of adults. Perhaps the practical




Fig. 34. John Singleton Copley. EPES SARGENT. 1759-1761. Oil on canvas, 497/8 x 40". Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1959.



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and literal bent of the American mentality was largely responsible for purging the emblematic tradition from most adult portraits. It was, after all, the very practical ability of portraiture to preserve the likenesses of its sitters, rather than any deep concern for aesthetic and intellectual considerations on the part of the patrons, that was most responsible for keeping painting alive as an art during our colonial era. While other subjects were occasionally commissioned, no painter was able to derive much income from any other area of easel painting than portraiture. John Singleton Copley's frustration with this situation is well known, and his longing to be a painter of historical subjects was instru- mental in leading him to spend the latter half of his career in England.

Another possible reason why emblematic references occur more frequently in portraits of children than adults is that emblems were perceived as per- forming a pedagogical function, presenting young minds with universal values. This seems to be borne out by the increasing emphasis in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on emblem books aimed pri- marily at the education of children.

It would seem, then, that the emblematic tradition, which had reached its peak in Europe in the seventeenth century, was in America essentially limited to its period of decline, as the tradition on this side of the Atlantic found its fullest expression only in the eighteenth century. Although emblematic references continued to appear in English painting throughout the eighteenth century, in the second half of the century meanings tended to be infused into portraiture through means less dependent on emblems derived from books, and it is interesting in this respect to note that Copley rarely included emblems in the portraits he painted after his move to England.35 By the eighteenth century in America, the imaginative allusions afforded by the inclusion of emblems in a painting were deemed most appropriate to portraits of children, whose minds were most receptive to their universal values and whose world of fantasy and perceived loving nature they could most aptly express. Practical-minded, more serious earth-bound adults were less suitable subjects for such flights of fancy.




I am indebted to the College of Arts and Architecture and to the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies of the Penn- sylvania State University for support in this study. I wish to express my appreciation to Charles Mann, Sandra Stelts, and the staff of the Rare Books Room of the Pennsylvania State Uni- versity Pattee Library, and to Anthony Cutler, George Mauner, and Jules David Prown for their help and suggestions.

Several of the ideas contained in this article were first presented in a lecture given at the College Art Association annual meeting in 1982. That material was subsequently reworked for a presentation at the International Conference of Emblems held in August, 1987.

1. Much of the traditional symbolism of the rose is discussed in Barbara Seward, The Symbolic Rose (New York, 1960). 2. See, for example, Otto van Veen, Amorum Emblemata (Ant- werp, 1608; reprint edition, New York and London, 1979), pp. 160-61.

3. Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, sold by R. Ware (London, 1755), plate XLIV, no. 14. The motif of the woman holding a rose appeared early in American painting, as in the portrait Elizabeth Paddy Wensley (Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts), dating from the late seventeenth century, but whether its anonymous painter was aware of its traditional meaning or whether he merely borrowed the formula from earlier models, is impossible to say. 4. For the theme of "The Garden of Love," see Raimond van Marle, Iconographie de l'Art Profane au Moyen-Age et a' la Renaissance (The Hague, 1932), vol. II, pp. 426-32. 5. Cupids and dolphins as companions of Venus appear in numerous works. An example in sculpture is the Medici Venus (Uffizi, Florence), while in the graphic arts an example is Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving Venus and Eros Carried by Dolphins (Bartsch 324). The relationship of the dolphin fountain to Venus has been pointed out under similar circumstances by J. Douglas Stewart in English Portraits of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Los Angeles, 1974), p. 8. The motif of the Cupid with a dolphin, without Venus, also makes its appearance in emblem books as a straightforward symbol of love. See, for example, Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, translated by Jean Baudouin (Paris, 1644; reprint edition, New York and London, 1976), Premiere Partie, p. 12. For a discussion of the iconography of the dolphin, see Julius S. Held, The Oil Sketches ofPeter Paul Rubens (Prince- ton, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 266-67.

6. See, for example, Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (London, 1709; reprint edition, New York and London, 1976), p. 12. The color red is also associated with love in Gerard de Lairesse, The Art of Painting (London, 1738), p. 156. Lairesse mentions Ripa and other emblem writers in his discussions of iconography. 7. Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, p. 20.

8. See Joachim Camerarius, Symbolorum & Emblematum (Frank- fort, 1661), Book II, no. 87; George Wither, A Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Moderne (London, 1635), no. 26; and Girolamo Ruscelli, Le Imprese Illustri (Venice, 1566), verso of fourth leaf of unpaginated signature between numbered pages 398 and 401. Not only in emblem books, but in single-leaf prints as well, the squirrel appears as a symbol. See Heinrich Aldegrever's engraving Diligence (Bartsch 123). 9. Besides their frequent appearance as symbols of love in emblem books, the bird and the dog, in addition to pieces of fruit, are traditional attributes of the greatest of the three theological virtues: Love or Charity. Charity or Caritas, according to traditional church teaching, consists of the union of two forms of love: Amor Dei, the love of God, and Amor Proximi, the love of one's neigh- bor. The love of God is most frequently represented in Renais- sance and Baroque art by some form of flame or flaming heart.

Love of one's fellow-man, on the other hand, could be represented by pieces of fruit in a bowl or in the hands of Charity's children, who often offer them to each other. The bird and the dog may also appear as companions of Charity and, when they do, emtcxty the same idea of earthly love. See, for example, Frans Floris's painting Faith, Hope and Charity (New Palace, Potsdam), illustrated in Max J. Friedlander, Early Netherlandish Painting (Leyden and Brussels, 1975), vol. 13, plate 78; and the drawing Charity (British Museum) attributed to Vincent Sellaer and illustrated in Old Master Draw- ings, vol. VI (December, 1939), plate 47. The bird alone accom- panies Charity in the engraving by Hendrick Goltzius (Bartsch 80), while the dog without the bird appears in the engravings Charity by Heinrich Aldegrever (Bartsch 118) and Hans Sebald Beham (Bartsch 131) as well as in the emblem Charitas in Nicolas Reusner, Au- reolorum Emblematum Liber singularis (Strasbourg, 1591), unpaginated, J IV recto (see Fig. 7). For the iconography of Charity in the Renaissance and Baroque, see Edgar Wind, "Charity," Journal ofthe Warburg Institute, vol. 1(1937), pp. 322-29.

10. A dead bird as a symbol of love is found as early as Catullus' poem, "On Lesbia's dead Sparrow," and appears in seventeenth- century Dutch painting. For a discussion of the amorous and often erotic symbolism of birds in Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, see E. de Jongh, "Erotica in Vogelperspectief," Simiolus, vol. III (1968 -1969), pp. 22-74.

11. Nicolas Reusner, D III recto; Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises (Leiden, 1586), p. 62; Cesare Ripa (London, 1709), p. 3, no. 12; Emblems for the Improvement and Entertainment of Youth, plate LVIII, no. 11.

12. William Williams, Mr. Penrose: The Journal ofPenrose, Sea- man, ed. David Howard Dickason (Bloomington, Indiana, 1969). See also David Howard Dickason, William Williams: Novelist and Painter of Colonial America, Indiana University Humanities Series, Number 67 (Bloomington, Indiana, 1970). 13. Dickason, William Williams, p. 139.

14. For the life and career of David Hall, see Robert Hurd Kany, "David Hall: Printing Partner of Benjamin Franklin" (Ph.D. dis- sertation, Department of History, Pennsylvania State University, 1963). The private library of James Logan, Philadelphia statesman and scholar, included emblem books by Andrea Alciati, Jacob Cats, Nicolas Reusner, Diego De Saavedra Fajardo, Giovanni Pietro Valeriano, and Otto van Veen, as well as the Hierogliphica of Horapollo. See Edwin Wolf 2nd, The Library ofJames Logan ofPhiladelphia, 1674-1751 (Philadelphia, 1974).

15. Frank H. Sommer, "Emblem and Device: The Origin of the Great Seal of the United States," Art Quarterly, vol. XXIV (Spring, 1961), p. 61; and Mrs. Russel Hastings, "The Sanders- Garvan Beaker by Cornelis Vander Burch," The Magazine An- tiques, vol. XXVII (February, 1935), pp. 52-55. 16. Quarter of a Millennium: The Library Company of Philadel- phia, 1731-1981, eds., Edwin Wolf 2nd and Marie Elena Korey (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 129.

17. Sommer, p. 72.

18. Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et Symboles dans l'Art Profane: 1450-1600 (Geneva, 1958), p. 247. 19. Otto van Veen, pp. 62-63. The English version of the poem reads:

As the camelion is, so must the lover bee, And oft his color change, lyke that whereon hee standes, His lovers will his will, her bidding his comaunds, And altred from himself right altred as is shee.

20. Illustrated in Gustav Gluck, Van Dyck (Klassiker der Kunst) (New York, 1931), p. 456; and in Eric Larsen, L'Opera Completa di Van Dyck (Milan, 1980), no. 936. 21. Illustrated in Gliick, p. 471; Larsen, no. 940; and Oliver Millar,




The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London, 1963), cat. no. 165, plate 80.

22. Van Dyck produced several portraits with clear mythological references. See Oliver Millar, Van Dyck in England (London, 1982), p. 29. 23. The Kuhn portrait of Ignatius Digges is reproduced in Richard H. Saunders and Ellen G. Miles, American Colonial Portraits, 1700-1776, exhibition catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1987, pp. 89 and 98, and Ann C. Van Devanter, "Anywhere So Long as There be Freedom": Charles Carroll of Carrollton, His Family & His Maryland, exhibition catalogue of The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975, p. 193.

24. See, for example, Vicenzo Cartari, Imagini de gli dei delle antichi (Padua, 1615), p. 468.

25. The motif of a woman at a love fountain was possibly first developed, although without the seashell, by Van Dyck during his stay in Italy in the 1620s. See his portrait Marchesa Catarina Durazzo (Palazzo Reale, Genoa), illustrated in Glick, p. 183; and in Larsen, no. 333. This was previously noted by J. Douglas Stewart, p. 25, n. 37. However, a portrait that is similar and includes the shell motif in the basin of the fountain is sometimes attributed to Rubens and may be even earlier than the portrait by Van Dyck in Genoa. See Carmen Rachiteanu, Catalogue of the Universal Art Gallery, III: Dutch and Flemish Painting (Bucha- rest, 1976), p. xxxvi.

26. A traditional Christian meaning has been suggested for the cherry held by Ignatius Digges. See Saunders and Miles, Ameri- can Colonial Portraits, p. 88. See also note 9 above, regarding birds and fruit as traditional attributes of Charity. 27. Copley's portrait of Abigail Belcher is in part derived from Faber's 1691 mezzotint after Kneller's portrait of the Duchess of Grafton. See Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr., American Colonial Painting: Materials for a History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959), plate XLV.

28. Doves appear as love symbols in several books. See, for example, Reusner, unpaginated, C V verso; Filippo Picinelli, Mundus Symbolicus (Cologne, 1694; reprint edition, New York and London, 1976), Lib. IV, Cap. XX, 270, p. 284; Joachim Camerarius, Symbolorum & Emblematum, vol. III (Nuremberg, 1596), no. 60; J. B. Boudard, Iconologie (Vienna, 1766; reprint edition, New York and London, 1976), p. 75; and Cesare Ripa (Paris, 1644), part II, 'Plaisir d'Amour," facing p. 103. The motif of tethered doves as a reference to love appears often in painting. Noteworthy examples are Benjamin West's Venus Relating to Adonis the Story of Hippomenes and Atalanta (private collection), painted c. 1767, and Cupid Releasing Two Doves (private collection), painted 1798. Illustrated in Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven and London, 1986), nos. 112 and 127.

29. The mandrake or mandragora has the meaning of love, for example, in Picinelli's Mundus Symbolicus, Lib. X, Cap. 28, the standard encyclopedia of symbolism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The mandrake's use to awaken sexual desires appears in Genesis 30: 14-17; and in medieval literature. See Theobaldi "Physiologus," ed. P. T. Eden (Leiden, 1972), p. 67, n. 3. The burdock, a plant sometimes regarded as under the control of Venus and also associated with sexual stirrings, has a variety of amorous connotations. See Melinda B. Parsons and William M. Ramsey, "The Scarlet Letter and an Herbal Tradi- tion," ESQ: Journal of the American Renaissance, vol. XXIX (4th Quarter, 1983), pp. 197-207.

30. Unknown Boy (c. 1758-1760) (Museum of Fine Arts, Hous- ton). Illustrated in Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), fig. 88.

31. E. de Jongh, pp. 48 -52.

32. Portraits of children by Badger which include emblematic squirrels are Thomas Mason (1758, The Stephen Phillips Memo- rial Charitable Trust House, Salem, Massachusetts) and Ben- jamin Badger (1758-1760, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum). Both are illustrated in Frank W. Bayley, Five Colonial Artists of New England (Boston, 1929), pp. 33 and 11. Another is Portrait of Two Children (c. 1760), illustrated in American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Boston, 1981), pp. 22 and 42. The tradition continued in later works. A portrait (Miss Denison of Stonington, Connecticut) painted about 1790 by the Denison Limner of Connecticut depicts the sitter holding a bird and accompanied by a pet squirrel cracking a nut. See American Naive Paintings from the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 1985), plate 24. Although squirrels became popular in colonial portraiture only in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, a prominently placed squirrel appears in the background, along with a rosebush, in a portrait from the 1720s by an unidentified artist of Frances Parke Custis in the collection of Washington and Lee University. I am indebted to Ellen Miles for bringing this to my attention.

33. Prown, pp. 16-17.

34. Tervarent, p. 106.

35. A perceptive discussion of Joshua Reynolds's infusion of meaning into portraiture is in Ronald Paulson, Emblem and Ex- pression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century (Lon- don, 1975), pp. 80-94. Reynolds did have a known interest in emblem books: his biographers tell us that he derived great plea- sure from a book in his collection by the most popular Dutch emblematist, Jacob Cats, and his name appears, along with those of George Romney, Benjamin West, and others, among the sub- scribers in George Richardson's Iconology, which was based on earlier editions Cesare Ripa's Iconologia and published in London in 1779.




emblems and colonial american painting

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