Edward Greene Malbone, Portrait of John Phillips, ca. 1799

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Edward Greene Malbone, Portrait of John Phillips, ca. 1799,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.3212.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Edward Greene Malbone, Portrait of John Phillips, ca. 1799,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.3212

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Elected the first mayor of Boston on April 16, 1822, John Phillips (1770–1823) was the only son of the merchant William Phillips and his wife, Margaret Phillips, née Wendell.¹ John descended from the Reverend George Phillips of Watertown, the progenitor of the New England Phillips family, and attended Harvard College, graduating in 1788. He studied law, and by 1794—the same year he married Salley Walley (1772–1845)—his reputation was so prominent that the city of Boston asked him to deliver a speech at the annual Fourth of July celebration.² In 1800, upon the establishment of the municipal court in Boston, he was named a public prosecutor, an occasion that may have prompted the commission of this miniature. Originally set in a locket, it may also have served as a keepsake for his wife.

With its saturated use of color—notable in the solid blue modeling of Phillips’s coat, edged in red, and the careful stippling, especially in the white dots along the edge of the collar to denote Phillips’s hair powder—this miniature is typical of Malbone’s early style before his sojourn to England in the summer of 1801.³ It is nearly impossible to track Malbone’s movements between 1798, when he advertised for clients in Philadelphia on November 24, and 1801, when he took out another ad in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 17.⁴ Malbone’s sister remembered that he passed his time in different cities until 1800, so it is possible he went to Boston to record Phillips sometime before then.⁵

Phillips died on May 29, 1823, and was buried in the Granary Burial Ground in Boston. He was survived by his wife and their seven children, including their son, Wendell Phillips, who became a noted abolitionist.

Notes

1. At the close of his term of office he was in poor health, suffering from heart disease, which led him to decline a reelection. See “John Phillips,” Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. J. G. Wilson and J. Fiske (New York: D. Appleton, 1900).

2. George Lowell Austin, The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1901), 22.

3. Portrait miniaturist Benjamin Trott (ca. 1770–1843) was envious of both Malbone’s and Walter Robertson’s saturated palette. Trott experimented with chemicals, trying to achieve more saturated pigments that would adhere to ivory, and Malbone offered to exchange works with him to share their differences. Trott refused. See William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York: G. P. Scott and Company, 1834), 415.

4. Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone, 1777–1807 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1958), 20.

5. Tolman, Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone, 21.

Commissioned by the sitter, John Phillips (1770–1823), Boston, Massachusetts;

Inherited by his friend, Rev. Joshua Huntington (1786–1819), Boston, Massachusetts [1];

By descent to his nephew, Daniel Huntington (1816–1906), New York [2];

Erskine Hewitt (1871–1938), New York [3];

His posthumous sale, The Erskine Hewitt Collection: Fine Early American Miniatures and Painting, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 21, 1938, lot 890, as John Phillips [4];

Norvin Hewitt Green (1893–1955), New York [5];

Sold at his posthumous sale, Early American Furniture, Important Miniatures and Prints, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 15, 1955, lot 245, as John Phillips, First Mayor of Boston;

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by October 15, 1955 [6];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] According to Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone (1777–1807) (New York: New York Historical Society, 1958), no. 313, p. 224, (repro.), as Phillips, John. This descriptive catalogue of Malbone’s works lists the previous owners of the portrait: “Rev. Joshua Huntington, Pastor of the Old South Church, an intimate friend of the sitter; Daniel Huntington, President of the National Academy; Erskine Hewitt; Mrs. Norvin H. Green; Mrs. John W. Starr, Kansas City, MO., since October 15, 1955.”

[2] It is possible that the portrait first went to Joshua’s brother and Daniel’s father, Benjamin Huntington (1777–1850), but there is currently no evidence to prove this.

[3] According to Russell Lynes, More Than Meets the Eye: The History and Collections of Cooper-Hewitt Museum (n.p.: Smithsonian Institution, 1981), 68: “Daniel Huntington (1816–1906), who was president of the National Academy of Design and is usually thought of as a painter of portraits, was an artist of particular interest to Erskine Hewitt, who left to the Museum more than 900 Huntington drawings, which reveal Huntington as a very accomplished landscapist as well as a portraitist.” Erskine’s bequest was in 1942. The reason for his interest in Huntington, and how and when he acquired so many of his drawings, remains unknown.

[4] The catalogue is digitized by Google on Hathitrust. Lot 890 is annotated with “130” and an “X” or “+”. It is unlikely the lot sold, since it reappears in the collection of his nephew, Norvin H. Green.

[5] Norvin Hewitt Green (1893–1955) was the executor of Hewitt’s will. Green’s sale, Superb Eighteenth Century American Furniture and Silver, Early American Portraits and Miniatures, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, November 30, 1950, did not include the present portrait miniature.

[6] Per Tolman, “Mrs. John W. Starr, Kansas City, MO., since October 15, 1955.”

The Exhibition of Erskine Hewitt’s Collection of American Miniatures, The New York Historical Society, New York, 1934, no cat.

Retrospective Exhibition of The Work of Artists Identified with Newport: Rhode Island Tercentenary, The Art Association of Newport, July 25 to August 16, 1936, no. 38, p. 15, as John Philipps.

A Benefit Exhibition of Privately Owned Early American Paintings with a Collection of Miniatures and Paperweights, Charles Woolsey Lyon American Antiques, New York, March 26 to April 25, 1941, no. 20, p. 48, as John Phillips.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 229, as John Phillips.

The Erskine Hewitt Collection: Fine Early American Miniatures and Painting (New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, October 21, 1938), 223, as John Phillips.

Early American Furniture, Important Miniatures and Prints (New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, October 15, 1955), 54, as John Phillips, First Mayor of Boston.

Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone (1777–1807) (New York: New York Historical Society, 1958), no. 313, pp. 223–224, (repro.), as Phillips, John.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 229, p. 75, (repro.), as John Phillips.