Robert Field, Portrait of Marcia Burnes van Ness, 1801

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Robert Field, Portrait of Marcia Burnes van Ness, 1801,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1403.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Robert Field, Portrait of Marcia Burnes van Ness, 1801,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1403

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Formerly believed to be a portrait of Mary van Ness, wife of Governor Cornelius Peter van Ness of Vermont, the present portrait in fact represents her sister-in-law by marriage, Marcia Burnes van Ness (1782–1832), who became heiress to the fortune that built Washington, DC.¹ Born in 1782, Burnes was the daughter of Scottish tobacco farmer David Burnes, upon whose six-hundred-acre Potomac River plantation was built much of the new US capital.² The miniature depicts a twenty-year-old Marcia Burnes standing against the backdrop of the family farm cottage on the northern bank of the Potomac, where notable figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison once visited.

Marcia Burnes was eight years old when word came from Philadelphia that the capital would shift to the Potomac district. From the sale of her father’s land for city lots, she became one of the wealthiest individuals in America.³ She was educated from an early age, studying first at the new School for Young Ladies across Rock Creek in Georgetown, where she learned to spin a smooth woolen thread, knit her own stockings, and run a household.⁴ Then, from about the age of twelve, she went to Baltimore, where she attended Madame Lacombe’s Female Academy. Returning to her parents’ home a year later, she witnessed a changed city, one with dances, large assemblies, and an annual “George Washington Birthnight Ball.”⁵ Thanks to Madame Lacombe’s instruction, she knew the intricate steps of the minuet and the gavotte, how to sing in a clear voice, and how to read and speak French,⁶ all skills that young women learned in an effort to secure an advantageous marriage.

In 1801, then twenty years old, Marcia Burnes met and became engaged to John Peter van Ness, a young congressman from New York who, after a distinguished military career, would later become the tenth mayor of Washington, DC.⁷ It was on this occasion that she sat for Robert Field for the present portrait. Just like the US capital itself, Field had moved from Philadelphia to Washington in an effort to secure important clientele.⁸ There he intersected with the brown-eyed bride-to-be, whom he presents in a low-cut white cotton dress with a frilled lace collar highlighted by dots of white impasto. She stands resolutely against the backdrop of her family estate on the Potomac River.

The landscape background is highly unusual for Field and evokes those in many miniatures of his near-contemporary and friend, Edward Green Malbone (American, 1777–1807).⁹ Although Field’s early training in London is uncertain, the short lines and hatch marks of his miniatures are similar to the methods of Richard Cosway (1742–1821), George Engleheart (1750–1829), and the Plimer brothers Andrew (1763–1837) and Nathaniel (1757–1822). Throughout Field’s tenure in the United States, he created portraits of significant figures such as George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other individuals prominent in the social, economic, and political spheres of American life. This portrait of a young Marcia Burnes on the verge of her marriage and entrance to the social and political scene of the new capital was no different.

Indeed, her union with Congressman van Ness and the birth of their daughter a year later was the start of a promising chapter. She sat to several other prominent artists at that time, including Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) who captured her in a portrait that closely resembles her appearance in the present miniature (Fig. 1).¹⁰ However, her life took a tragic turn at age forty-one in 1823 when her daughter and baby granddaughter fell victim to disease. Devastated by grief, Marcia retreated from society, ultimately transferring her inheritance to her husband in 1826. Her passing in 1832 prompted a unique tribute from the US Congress, highlighting her significant contributions as the mayor’s wife and a compassionate benefactor, particularly to orphaned children displaced by the ravages of war. Beyond this likeness, with its hair reserve marked with the sitter’s initials, Marcia Burnes van Ness left an enduring legacy, shaping the history of Washington and exemplifying resilience in the face of personal tragedy.

Notes

1. Cornelius Peter van Ness (1782–1852) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the tenth governor of Vermont from 1823 to 1826 and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Spain from 1829 to 1836. Cornelius van Ness married two times: first to Rhoda Savage, with whom he had a daughter named Marcia van Ness (1807–1881), which was perhaps conflated with the name of the present sitter, thus confusing their identities. See Salmon Portland Chase and John Niven, The Salmon P. Chase Papers: Correspondence, 1823–1857 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), 27.

2. Much of the biographical information about Marcia Burnes van Ness and her family comes from Frances Carpenter Huntington’s informative article, “The Heiress of Washington City: Marcia Burnes van Ness, 1782–1832,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, DC 69/70 (1969): 80–101. As a wealthy plantation owner, David Burnes also kept slaves who worked in both his household and his fields.

3. David Burnes died in 1799. Because he had no will, Marcia inherited his fortune in excess of $1.5 million upon the death of her mother in 1807. See Huntington, “Heiress of Washington City,” 86.

4. Huntington, “Heiress of Washington City,” 82.

5. Huntington, “Heiress of Washington City,” 85.

6. Huntington, “Heiress of Washington City,” 85–86.

7. For more information about John Peter van Ness, see “Van Ness, John Peter,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, accessed December 22, 2023, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/V000049.

8. Robert Field visited Mount Vernon in 1801 to paint a portrait of George Washington. He moved from England to the United States in 1794, as many artists had in search of new clientele. Field initially settled in Philadelphia and joined a group of artists led by Charles Willson Peale before moving with the capital to Washington, DC. See Harry Piers, Robert Field: Portrait Painter in Oils, Miniature, and Watercolors, and Engraver (New York: Frederic Fairchild Sherman, 1927), 20.

9. Edward Green Malbone, Mr. Robert Macomb, ca. 1806, watercolor on ivory, 3 3/4 x 3 in. (9.5 x 7.6 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11507. Field was friendly with a constellation of artists in the new capital, including Malbone, Benjamin Trott, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and William R. Birch. See Piers, Robert Field, 18–19.

10. She also sat for a portrait miniature by James Peale (American, 1749–1831) in 1797, when she was fifteen. See James Peale, Marcia Burns, 1797, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 5/16 in. (7.3 x 5.9 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015.19.2478, https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.177719.html.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

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

James Peale, Marcia Burns, 1797, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 5/16 in. (7.3 x 5.87 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015.19.2478.

Gilbert Stuart, Marcia van Ness, 1805, oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 27 7/8 in. (74.3 x 70.8 cm), Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, New York.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 226, as Mary van Ness (Wife of the Governor of Vermont).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 226, p. 74, (repro.), as Mary van Ness (Wife of the Governor of Vermont).