Ralph Earl
American, 1751 - 1801
(not assigned)New York, New York
(not assigned)Connecticut
SchoolPortraiture
Biography(b Shrewsbury, MA, 11 May 1751; d Bolton, CT, 16 Aug 1801). He was born into a prominent family of farmers and craftsmen. Both he and his brother James chose artistic careers at a young age. Ralph had established himself as a portrait painter in New Haven, CT, by 1774. He returned to Leicester, MA, in the autumn of that year to marry his cousin Sarah Gates, who gave birth to a daughter a few months later. But Earl left his wife and child with her parents and returned to New Haven, where he remained until 1777. There he saw the portraits of John Singleton Copley, which had an enduring impact on him. Works such as Earl's notable full-length portrait of Roger Sherman (c. 1776-7; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.) were painted in the manner of Copley. During this period Earl also produced four sketches of the sites of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which were engraved in 1776 by his associate Amos Doolittle.
A Loyalist, in 1778 Earl fled his native country for England, where he first began painting in Norfolk under the patronage of Colonel John Money. Through the studio of Benjamin West, he absorbed some of the mannerisms of English portraiture and exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy, London, in 1783 and 1784. He also acquired an interest in landscape painting, inspired by English country-house painting and sporting art. Landscape vignettes first appeared in the background of his numerous English portraits.
In 1785, after the American Revolution, Earl settled in New York with his second wife, Anne Whiteside, an Englishwoman. He was imprisoned for debt from 1786 to 1788, but he eventually obtained his freedom by painting portraits of several prominent New Yorkers, including Mrs Alexander Hamilton (New York, Mus. City NY). Most of these patrons belonged to a new benevolent organization, the Society for the Relief of Distressed Debtors, and assisted Earl by sitting for their portraits in prison. On his release, the court appointed a guardian for Earl, Dr Mason Fitch Cogswell (1761-1830), a native of Connecticut who had a medical practice in New York. When Cogswell moved to Hartford in 1789, he assisted Earl in obtaining portrait commissions of prominent Connecticut families.
Earl established the portrait style that has come to be associated with Connecticut, inspiring a school of local followers, including Joseph Steward (1753-1822), John Brewster jr and Captain Simon Fitch (1785-1835). Earl tempered the academic style he had learnt in England to suit the more modest pretentions of his Connecticut patrons, while retaining some of the conventions of English portraiture in the Grand Manner, including the large scale and the use of red curtains. For the most part, however, Earl's Connecticut portraits departed from these conventions in, for instance, his monumental double portrait of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth (1792; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum). The subjects were painted in the front parlour of their newly renovated house in Windsor, a view of which appears through the window. In this and his other Connecticut works, Earl tightened his brushwork, painting in a more linear fashion than seen in his earlier portraits. He did not attempt to idealize his subjects but instead created 'true' likenesses of his sitters shown in their own environment. Earl's skill as a landscape painter was encouraged by his later Connecticut patrons, as land ownership had become increasingly important in conveying status in post-Colonial America. In 1796 Earl received three commissions to paint landscapes with the new houses of his patrons in Litchfield County. In 1798 he painted the detailed View of Old Bennington (Bennington, VT, Mus.), which includes a self-portrait.
While Earl spent most of his career in Connecticut, he travelled back and forth to Long Island each year from 1791 to 1794, returning to New York City in 1794, where he successfully sought new patrons. That he reverted to a more academic style in these regions to suit his patrons' tastes is demonstrated in such portraits as Benjamin Judah (1794; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum), a prominent New York City merchant.
From 1799 to 1801, Earl was in Northampton, MA, where he continued to paint portraits and took several students, including his son (2) Ralph E. W. Earl. In 1799 Earl and two business associates from Northampton, one of them the ornamental painter Jacob Wicker, became the first American artists to travel to Niagara Falls. With Wicker's assistance, his sketches of the 'Stupendous Cataract' became the basis for his 'Prospectus' of the Falls, a panorama (4.25×7.30 m) that was exhibited in the Hall of the Tontine Building in Northampton. From there it was sent on a tour to the major cities in America and was last noted on view in London. Earl died of 'intemperance', according to the local minister in Bolton, CT. (Source: ELIZABETH MANKIN KORNHAUSER, "Ralph Earl," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online (Oxford University Press) Accessed March 29, 2004) http://www.groveart.com
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
- male
