Augustus Fielding Hawkins

Provenance

The sitter [1798-1876]; his son, Strother Hawkins [1830-1905]; his daughter, Harriot Leavy Hawkins;[1] sold 22 March 1920 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[2] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] Although legal ownership of the portrait never passed from the direct descendants, Augustus Fielding Hawkins' niece Mary Leavy took physical possession of it at an unknown date (possibly around 1905, when Strother Hawkins died). It was subsequently in the possession of her daughter Lizzie Leavy, who in 1917 turned it over to the rightful owner Harriot Leavy Hawkins; letter of 23 July 1920 from Harriot Hawkins (in NGA curatorial files).

[2] According to Clarke catalogue annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library).

Associated Names

Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Hawkins, Augustus Fielding
Hawkins, Harriot Leavy
Hawkins, Strother
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.

Exhibition History

1922: Exhibition of Portraits by Early American Artists, The Union League Club, New York, March 1922, no. 8.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue.

1943: American Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1943.

1948: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1948.

1951: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1951.

1953: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1953.

1955: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1955.

1956: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1956.

Technical Summary

The painting was executed on a 1.6 cm-thick vertically-grained poplar panel. The front of the panel was primed with a smooth, thin, off-white layer and the back with a gray layer. Gray brushed under drawing is visible at the ear and on the ruffled shirt front both in natural light and with infrared reflectography. The paint was applied using tight and smoothly blended brushstrokes, with low impasto only evident in the white ruffles and the forehead. X-radiography reveals that the sitter's left shoulder line was lowered 1.5 cm, that he once wore a semicircular hat, and possibly had a mustache. Inpainting is confined to a small circular area to the right of the sitter's left eye. The varnish has yellowed.

Bibliography

1902: Price, Samuel Woodson. The Old Masters of the Bluegrass--Jouett, Bush, Grimes, Frazer, Morgan, Hart. Louisville, 1902: no. 106, 56.

1928: Cuthbert, Lee. "The Thomas B. Clarke Collection of Early American Portraits." American Magazine of Art 19 (June 1928): 304, repro. 303.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered.

1939: Martin, Mary Farmer. Catalog of All Known Paintings by Matthew Harris Jouett. Louisville, 1939: no. 189, 25.

1968: Floyd, William Barrow. Jouett-Bush-Frazer: Early Kentucky Artists. Lexington, 1968: 48, 54, repro. 55.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 76, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 186, repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 216, repro.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 385-387, repro.

Augustus Fielding Hawkins, c. 1820

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