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Ralph Earl

Thomas Earle, 1800

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 95.5 x 86.1 cm (37 5/8 x 33 7/8 in.)

framed: 117.2 x 108.3 x 4.4 cm (46 1/8 x 42 5/8 x 1 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.42

Artists / Makers

Ralph Earl (painter) American, 1751 - 1801

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower left (original signature reinforced by later hand): R. Earle Pinxt 1800

Provenance

From the sitter to his daughter, Electa Earle Nye [Mrs. Luther Nye, 1778-1847], New Braintree, Massachusetts; her daughter, Melinda Earle Nye Chandler [Mrs. Marcus Chandler, d. 1887], Springfield, Massachusetts; her daughter, Harriet M. Chandler Schoepf, Springfield, Massachusetts; purchased by (Edward Francis Coffin, Worcester, Massachusetts); sold 1916 to the Worcester Art Museum;[1] by exchange 1921 to (Ehrich Galleries, New York); repurchased by (Edward Francis Coffin); sold 16 March 1923 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 1947 to NGA.

[1] "Landscape and Portrait by Ralph Earl", Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum 7, no. 4 (January 1917), 10; Edward Francis Coffin to Thomas B. Clarke, letter dated 10 March 1923 (typed copy in NGA curatorial file); Louisa Dresser, Worcester Museum of Art, letter 19 December 1951, to Anna Wells Rutledge, in NGA curatorial file. Coffin inititally hoped to sell the painting through the Macbeth Gallery in New York, for which he would have paid the Gallery a commission. Correspondence with Robert Macbeth between 2 June and 20 October 1916 shows that Coffin sent the painting to the Macbeth Gallery in the fall. After the two men could not agree on a price, it was apparently returned. By then, according to Louisa Dresser, the director of the Worcester Art Museum had seen the painting. The correspondence discusses the condition of the portrait and its conservation. Coffin also wrote Macbeth on 29 June 1916 that the painting had been reframed but that he had kept the original frame in case the purchaser was someone "of antiquarian leanings" for whom the original might be "preferred to a modern, though more appropriate manner of framing." The letters, damaged by fire and not completely legible, are found in the General Correspondence files, Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. (mfm 2581).

[2] Dresser to Rutledge, letter 19 December 1951 (see note 1 above); Historical Records Survey, American Portraits 1620-1825 Found in Massachusetts, 2 vols. (Boston, 1939), 1: 132. The name of the seller and date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke (Philadelphia, 1928) annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library).

Associated Names

Chandler, Melinda Earle Nye
Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Coffin, Edward Francis
Coffin, Edward Francis
Earle, Thomas
Ehrich Galleries
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Nye, Electa Earle
Schoepf, Harriet M. Chandler
Worcester Art Museum

Bibliography

1888: Earle, Pliny. The Earle Family: Ralph Earle and His Descendants. Worcester, Massachusetts, 1888: 57-58, repro. 56.

1917: "Landscape and Portrait by Ralph Earl." Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum 7, no. 4 (January 1917): 7, 10, repro. 9.

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.

1936: "The Thomas Clarke American Portrait Collection Is Sold." Art News (February 1936): repro. 6.

1939: Historical Records Survey, American Portraits 1620-1825 Found in Massachusetts, 2 vols. Boston, 1939: 1:132.

1939: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild. "The Painting of Ralph Earl With a List of His Portraits." Art in America 27, no. 4 (October 1939): 163, 174; no. 1, 165, repro.

1967: Goodrich, Laurence B. Ralph Earl, Recorder for an Era. Albany, 1967: 42, fig. 16.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 54, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 151, repro.

1988: Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. Ralph Earl: Artist-Entrepreneur. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1988: 235-236, 243, n. 33, 286.

1991: Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic. Exh. cat. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth. New Haven, London, and Hartford, 1991-1992: 232, no. 65.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 169, repro.

1995: Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 99-101, repro. 100.