PROCEEDINGS OF
THE
THE CITY
AND THE BOOK V INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
THE AMERICANS IN FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY II
SATURDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2008
FLORENCE'S LYCEUM
CLUB AND THE 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY
II. Hiram Powers and Amasa Hewins_______
'The 'English' Cemetery and Historical Reconstruction: Liberating Hiram Powers' 'Greek Slave' to Return to Florence'. Roger J. Crum, University of Dayton
'Hiram Powers, Kate Field and the Italian Risorgimento'. Melissa Dabakis, Kenyon College
'Kate Field'. Francesca Limberti
'Fortunate Associations: The American Painter Amasa Hewins (1795-1855) and Florence'. John F. McGuigan, Independent Scholar
Bibliography
Whiting, Lilian. The World
Beautiful. First Series. London: Little Brown and Co.,
1894.
_____. “A Story of Psychical Communication.” Arena. 13, 1895: 263-270.
_____. “Kate Field.” Arena.
16, 1896: 919-27.
_____. The World Beautiful.
Second series. London: Gay and Bird, 1896.
_____. After Her Death. The
Story of a Summer. London: Sampson Low, Marston and
Company, 1897.
_____. The World Beautiful.
Third Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1898.
_____. Kate Field. A Record.
Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1899.
_____. A Study of Mrs.
Browning. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1902.
_____. “Florentine Days.” Arena.
30, 1903: 623-25.
_____. The Florence of Landor.
London: Gay and Bird, 1905.
_____. Italy the Magic Land.
Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1907.
"Fortunate Associations: The
American Painter Amasa Hewins (1795-1855) and Florence."
John F. McGuigan Jr, Independent Scholar. Paper.
While Amasa Hewins
(1795-1855) is largely forgotten today as a painter, he is
perhaps best remembered as a man of fortunate associations:
having formed part of an estimable colony of American artists
in Florence on three different occasions; having traveled
throughout Italy with two of America’s most prominent artists;
having been appointed United States Commercial Agent to
Florence, essentially performing the duties of consul; and,
ultimately, having been buried in the famous “English
Cemetery” at Florence. Had these interesting events not
transpired, history would likely never have given Hewins—whose
known painting oeuvre is quite small—a second
thought. We are, therefore, fortunate that they did occur
because an examination of the life of Amasa Hewins pleasantly
reveals a rich history and the extent to which he was
inextricably linked to Florence, a city he dearly loved.
In 1795, in the middle
of George Washington’s presidency, Amasa Hewins was born in
Sharon, Massachusetts, a typical New England town where his
family had resided for four generations. Like many Americans
of the Federal period, he received limited formal schooling,
but he supplemented it with a passion for reading and foreign
languages. This auto-didactic classical education proved
invaluable to him later in life, and he wisely advised his
eldest son Charles (1822-98) to do likewise. He wrote to the
ten-year-old boy from Italy in 1832: “I wish that you should
acquire a taste for reading and study, that if ever you should
travel, you may be able to understand and enjoy what you see.”[i]
We know little of
Hewins’ early life until his marriage in 1820 to Elizabeth
Alden (dates unknown) of Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of
Boston, where they raised a family. In 1821 he was listed as a
merchant of West India goods on Brattle Street in Boston,
trading in rum, sugar, molasses, and cotton. Hewins probably
harbored artistic aspirations from an early age, but no
anecdote survives to corroborate this theory. Perhaps he
studied under one of the numerous portrait painters resident
in Boston, but this, too, is unrecorded. In the first decades
of the nineteenth century, portraiture was unquestionably the
best avenue to financial success in the fine arts, and, by
1827, Hewins had abandoned his mercantile interests and moved
his household to Washington, DC to pursue that line of work.
Then as now, the nation’s capital was rife with politicians
eager to commemorate their exalted status by commissioning
their likenesses, and Hewins remained profitably employed
there for two years, at which time he moved his family back to
Boston and secured a painting studio at 73 Cornhill.
Hewins’ decision to
study in Florence rather than Rome may have been guided by the
presence of a contingent of fellow Bostonians resident in the
former place: the sculptor Horatio Greenough (1805-52); his
brother, the painter Henry Greenough (1807-83); and the
portraitist John Gore (1806-68). The four men had likely been
acquainted in Boston and fell into a very comfortable routine
in Florence centered around the ever-popular artists’ retreat,
the Caffè Doney. Together they frequented the Accademia delle
Belle Arti, shared models, and visited each other’s lodgings
and studios. Over the next five months Hewins profited greatly
from these strong friendships, which allowed him to freely
exchange ideas, copy in art galleries, and take sketching
trips to nearby villages with the support of his fellow
countrymen.
Another fixture within
the American colony at Florence was James Ombrosi (ca.
1777-1852), who held the post that Hewins would
ultimately succeed him in almost a quarter century later,
namely, that of U.S. consular representative.[iv]
James Edward Freeman (1808-84), the American figure painter
and consul to Ancona, brilliantly described Ombrosi in his
memoirs, observing that “he was a Tuscan, with a competent
income, a bachelor, and proud, above all things, of being our
representative as consul.” Freeman continued, “Ombrosi was of
a portly mien—his cheeks very broad and fat, his forehead
extremely small, his ears large, and his nose little short of
immense, which he saddled conspicuously with a pair of gold
spectacles. . . . His dress, somewhat of an exploded fashion,
was studiously respectable, and his gold-headed cane a
conspicuous accessory to his general appearance.”[v]
An esteemed connoisseur
and collector of old master paintings and drawings, Ombrosi
was especially fond of artists and maintained strong
convictions about how they should study. He was partial to
sending Americans to two teachers, Giuseppe Bezzuoli
(1784-1855) and Pietro Benvenuti (1769-1844), the future
director of the Accademia. But if these pupils faltered in or
rebelled against their discipline, Ombrosi could turn quite
nasty. As the American painter Robert Weir (1803-89) recalled:
“Another of my acquaintance, who appeared to take a great
interest in my welfare, was a Mr. O[mbrosi], a most rare
specimen of Italian character: he was fawning, subtle, and
vindictive, and took umbrage at my leaving Signor Benvenuti.
Several little circumstances took place which sometimes
irritated and sometimes soothed him, but at length he let me
know that unless I left Florence, my life was in danger.”[vi]
We do not know if Hewins studied drawing under a Florentine
master—for his sparse journal entries from this period mention
little of his training—nor how well he got on with Ombrosi. We
can assume, however, that his experience may have paralleled
that of Horatio Greenough, who recently lamented that Ombrosi
had been “coming out with occasional demonstrations of ill
will which have induced me to drop from intimacy to civility,
from civility to wary caution, which last feeling actuates my
every action where he is concerned.”[vii]
On 9 March 1831 the
American colony in Florence was greatly enriched by the
arrival of Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872), the
illustrious president of the National Academy of Design in New
York, traveling with his colleague, the portraitist John
Cranch (1807-91). Morse had already conceived the germ of his
idea for the electric telegraph, an invention that would
indelibly change civilization, but it was supplanted for the
time being by his passion to become a great painter. The
following two months must have been a whirlwind of excitement
and learning because the three most avid diarists of the
intimate group—Cranch, Hewins, and Morse—found little or no
time to record their daily activities. We can discern,
however, that Hewins and Morse shared a deep love for the
Venetian School because the two men departed together for
Venice on 16 May.
Although they first
stopped in Bologna to leisurely explore its rich collections
of art, this was disappointingly not to be the case, as Hewins
reported in his journal that “the streets as we entered
appeared quite deserted and desolate; scarcely a person was
seen. The revolution which but a few days before had broken
out was quelled and everything appeared quiet.”[viii]
Hewins and Morse remained only three days in Bologna, barely
long enough to visit the galleries and confirm their profound
admiration for the Bolognese School, because as Hewins wrote,
“Strangers as well as their own citizens are watched like
thieves, and the slightest pretext is said to be sufficient
motive for arrest.”[ix]
Therefore, they wisely resolved to proceed directly to Venice,
although Hewins pledged to return to Bologna.
They arrived in Venice
on 22 May 1831, and Hewins was instantly enamored by “singing
girls with their guitars, at every few steps chanting the airs
of Rossini, and accompanying themselves upon their favorite
instruments.”[x]
In spite of the rainy spring weather, they immersed themselves
in the celebrated artworks housed in the Accademia, and Hewins
painted an ambitious copy after Paolo Veronese’s Rape
of Europa (1575-80) in the Palazzo Ducale. With
introductions from friends in Florence and Bologna, Hewins and
Morse developed many diverse and stimulating acquaintances
that included Ludovico Lipparini (1800-56), a professor at the
Accademia; Count Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834), friend and
biographer of Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and former director
of the Accademia; Count Bernardino Corneani (1780-after 1855),
amateur painter and general superintendent of pictures in
Venice; Father Paschal Aucher (dates unknown), Lord Byron’s
Armenian language teacher; and the British consul, W. T. Money
(dates unknown). That 4 July, Hewins noted in his journal that
“the only Americans in Venice were Mr. Morse and myself, and
although we could not make a very large dinner party we could
not forget the day of our independence,” and they abstemiously
toasted the occasion over a cup of coffee.[xi]
Their fruitful and quite social two-month sojourn ended on 16
July, when Hewins departed for Bologna, and Morse for Paris.
The next three months
found Hewins back in Bologna, as promised, where life had
almost returned to normal after the revolution. He reflected
that “I have found the Bolognese, generally, exceedingly
obliging and attentive to strangers, more so perhaps than any
other city in Italy. . . . This, to be sure, may be in
consequence of their not seeing so many travelers and
strangers as are at Florence and Rome.”[xii]
He appears to have spent most of his time at the Accademia
executing a copy of Guido Reni’s Massacre of the
Innocents (1611, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna). Back in
the Tuscan capital on 10 November, Hewins briefly reentered
his exhilarating social circle. One distinguished new addition
was Thomas Cole (1801-48), widely regarded as the father of
America’s Hudson River School, who had been living with the
Greenough brothers since July. Hewins invited his peers to his
rooms to see the progress he had made in his copies and
sketches over the last six months, as well as the print
collection that he had assembled. Staying in Florence only
nine days, Hewins dispatched his paintings, drawings, and
prints to Boston, bade his goodbyes, and on 19 November
departed Florence for Rome, where he arrived five days later.
Disappointingly, Hewins
penned only four entries over the ensuing five months in Rome,
and we know little of his activities. Not until 12 April 1832
do we learn from Thomas Cole that the two set off together in
a vettura for a three-day sketching excursion to Tivoli.[xiii]
Hewins evidently proved to be such an agreeable traveling
companion that, one month later, Cole invited him, along with
another Boston portrait painter, Francis Alexander
(1800-80)—who, like Hewins, would expatriate to Florence in
the 1850s—on a three-week sketching expedition to Naples,
Paestum, Pompeii, and Salerno.
Back in the
Eternal City on 1 June, Hewins lingered a further two weeks
before the malarial season drove him back to Florence on 19
June. Unfortunately for us, Hewins only recorded two entries
in his journal that summer, but we can imagine that he passed
his days copying in galleries or working from the live model,
while in the evenings he attended the theater or sought the
camaraderie of Cole, Cranch, Gore, Alexander, and the
Greenoughs. On 2 September 1832 Hewins chronicled his
departure from Florence and expressed regret that he may never
return. He spent the next ten months in Paris, followed by a
one-month tour of the Continent, before eventually reaching
Boston in June 1833.
We are privileged to
know quite a bit about Hewins’ first sojourn abroad from the
diaries of his colleagues, Morse and Cranch, as well as his
own travel journal. Whereas Morse transcribes fascinating
details about Italian life and his daily painting habits, and
Cranch provides a gossipy account of the comings and goings of
the art colony, Hewins’ journal is a rather matter-of-fact
itinerary with a few interesting asides, rather than an
insightful reflection on personal growth and self-discovery.
Thus, while we have a good idea of his travels, he shares very
little with us about his craft, his views on art, or even his
output beyond a few copies after the old masters.
Nevertheless, it is not difficult to reconstruct Hewins’ oeuvre and patronage from his subsequent
exhibition record in America.
In 1834 Hewins
displayed eight pictures from his European trip at the Annual
Exhibition of the prestigious Boston Athenæum. A large copy
after Raphael’s celebrated
Madonna di Foligno (1512, Pinacoteca Vaticana) was owned
by Charles Lyman (dates unknown) of Waltham, Massachusetts,
who also commissioned Thomas Cole’s famous monumental work, Remains of the Great Roman Aqueduct (1832,
Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis). Hewins
balanced three other copies, one after Murillo and two after
Titian, with original compositions, such as Father
Giuseppe, A Capuchin Monk, Painted at Rome; A
Roman Peasant Woman; and The Blind Mandolin
Player, Taken in Italy from Life. Only one work was
listed for sale that year, Genardo, the Blind
Minstrel of Capua, near Naples (Drawn from Life). The
following summer, Hewins debuted four more Italian subjects at
Boston’s American Gallery of Fine Arts, namely, a copy after
Il Volteranno’s Sleeping Cupid (Palazzo
Pitti) and three original compositions: Mount
Vesuvius, A Florentine, and Capuchin Monk, the last listed for sale. At
this point, Hewins’ Italian oeuvre—all of
which today remains unlocated—had been dispersed, and he
returned to exhibiting bespoke portraits for the next five
years.
Then in August 1839 an
international incident captivated the entire nation, and
Hewins seized the opportunity to capitalize on the excitement.
The occasion was the U.S. Navy’s seizure of the renegade
Spanish slave ship La Amistad in Long Island
Sound. The subjugated Africans on board—accused of murdering
the Amistad’s captain and cook in order to
gain control of the ship—were taken to New Haven, Connecticut
to await what would become one of the most sensational trials
in American history. Anticipating the public’s lust for
information, Hewins traveled to the neighboring state to take
the portraits of the key individuals involved. The result was
a monumentally sized painting, now unlocated, entitled The Death of Capt. Ferrer, the Captain of the Amistad, July, 1839, which he exhibited to paying
audiences in 1840. It was advertised that “this thrilling
event with 26 of the principal characters is correctly
delineated on 135 feet of canvas, and strikes the beholder as
real life. Its faithfulness to the original has been attested
by those who participated in the awful tragedy. The hundreds
of visitors both in New Haven and Hartford where the Africans
have been seen, have bestowed the most unqualified praise upon
the merits of the painting.”[xiv]
Surviving woodblock prints of the work reveal that while Hewins portrayed the exact
moment of the captain’s death during the insurrection, he did
not take sides but let the audience decide if the slaves were
murderous mutineers or victims of an evil institution who
acted in self-defense—the very two arguments at the center of
their ongoing trial, which became a beacon for the
abolitionist movement. Thus, Hewins’ dramatic depiction of
this still unfolding current event did not conform to the
idiom of history painting but more closely approximated
reportage, firmly situating it within a great American
artistic tradition that extends from John Singleton Copley’s
(1738-1815) iconic Watson and the Shark of
1778 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) to the
immediacy of Winslow Homer’s (1836-1910) Civil War pictures.
Family lore tells of
Hewins’ longing to return to Florence, a city that, it was
said, he loved so much that he named one of his daughters
after it. This affinity was borne out in November 1841, eight
years after his first trip ended, when, using the proceeds
from his Amistad picture, he once again
sailed across the Atlantic. Back in Florence, his old friend
Horatio Greenough remained firmly ensconced as the lion among
other eminent American sculptors that now included Shobal Vail
Clevenger (1812-43) and Hiram Powers (1805-73), in whose
studio Hewins made a sketch (Private Collection) of the
plaster model for Eve Tempted
(1842, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC) in May
1842. Ombrosi continued to perform his consular duties with
the same vigor—and spite—as before, making as many enemies as
he did friends. Even though the Government of Tuscany had
refused to recognize Ombrosi’s status as U.S. consular agent
ever since 1834, and President Andrew Jackson revoked his
consulship that same year, it did little to prevent him from
obstinately keeping his title and performing his regular
duties for American travelers.
The timing of Hewins’
second trip, whether by plan or coincidence, dovetailed neatly
with a veritable invasion of American artists into Florence,
including Thomas Cole, James DeVeaux (1812-44), Asher B.
Durand (1796-1886), Francis William Edmonds (1806-63), James
E. Freeman, Daniel Huntington (1816-1906), Thomas P. Rossiter
(1818-71), Luther Terry (1813-1900), and Samuel Bell Waugh
(1814-85). Hewins’ journal—if he kept one—is unlocated, so
that his exact itinerary is uncertain, but we do know the
purpose of his journey: he intended to capitalize on the
format and success of his Amistad picture by
painting a panorama of the Mediterranean coastline. While
panoramas had been a commercially popular form of art and
entertainment in America since at least 1800, Hewins’ project
was unique in that, as the promoter William E. Hutchings
(dates unknown) later claimed, it was the only one of
“‘Coasts, Cities, and Sea, beyond the Ocean,’ ever painted by
a native of the United States.”[xv]
Though neither the panorama nor any of Hewins’ preparatory
drawings has yet surfaced, a descriptive brochure explained
that it was “executed from drawings made by A. Hewins, during
his voyages in the Mediterranean, and his travels in Spain,
France, and Italy; embracing views of Gibraltar, Barcelona,
Toulon, Genoa, Naples, Vesuvius, &c.”[xvi]
Certainly the idea of depicting Italy and the Mediterranean in
a panorama was not novel. John Vanderlyn (1775-1852), who
painted a panorama of Versailles in 1819 (Panoramic
View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), toyed with a similar
notion while he was in Italy from 1805 to 1807; Thomas Cole
contemplated one of the Bay of Naples during his trip there
with Hewins in 1832; and Samuel Bell Waugh was currently
gathering material for two different Italian-themed panoramas
that he would exhibit in America throughout the 1850s.
Returning to America in
August 1842 with his preparatory sketches, Hewins scandalized
stuffy Boston Brahmins by sporting an outward manifestation of
the bohemian lifestyle: “a little mustache that excited some
comment in a society where smooth-shaven faces were the rule.”[xvii]
Over the next six years work progressed on what Hutchings
boasted was “the largest painting in the world” until its debut at the
Masonic Temple on Boston’s Tremont Street in 1848. [xviii]
At a cost of twenty-five cents per viewing, crowds flocked to
see the Grand Classical Panorama of the Sea and
Shores of the Mediterranean. Hutchings, who conducted
tours worthy of P. T. Barnum, touted every evening that
“indeed, no pains nor expense has been spared to render it not
only worthy of the vastness and grandeur of the subject, but
superior in every respect to anything of the kind heretofore
known or attempted.”[xix]
Giving us the only truly effective description of Hewins’
work, he tantalized that “the spectator will behold in this
painting, the steamers, men-of-war, merchantmen, ships, boats,
and craft of every class and all nations, in their natural and
all-various positions, in the famous gulf, bays, and ports.”[xx]
After its run in Boston, the panorama traveled to great
acclaim throughout the United States, as far away as Ohio and
Alabama.
Ultimately, Hewins’
successful portrait practice, combined with the revenue earned
from his panorama, afforded him the financial wherewithal to
expatriate to his beloved Florence. He received his passport
from the State Department on 15 March 1852 and commenced his
third and final voyage.[xxi]
A surviving sketchbook (Boston Athenæum), the only record of
his trip, begins with a view of the Cape of St. Vincent on the
coast of Portugual and faithfully records the artist’s
movements until he reached Florence in the first week of June.
In addition to Greenough and Powers, the American presence in
Florence was newly fortified by the painters Thomas Buchanan
Read (1822-72) and Walter Gould (1829-93), and the sculptors
Joseph Mozier (1812-70) and Joel Tanner Hart (1810-77). From
what we can infer, Hewins was particularly close to Powers and
shared with him a fascination for spiritualism. One Halloween
he wrote to son Charles that he was grateful for the papers
and pamphlets that he had sent, but that he “should be glad of
anything relating to spiritualism,” especially for “Powers who
asks me every time I see [him for] more.”[xxii]
Over the next two
years, Hewins filled his sketchbook with delightfully fresh
drawings of scenes in and around Florence that show a vast
improvement from the rather stiff and amateur productions of
his first trip. While he was a fully mature draftsman,
however, he seems now to have only pursued art for his
personal pleasure. Instead, we see from his business ledger
(Boston Athenæum), which begins in September 1852, that he
returned to his roots in commerce and became an exporter of
purported old master paintings, as well as of “carved wooden
boxes, pieces of old damask, Florentine frames, and
mosaics—things of a sort not often seen in the New England of
the fifties.” [xxiii]
All of this material he collected and sent to son Charles in
Boston, who then consigned everything to various public
auctions. Nine massive shipments were logged, listing over two
hundred objects in each—mostly paintings. In reality, Hewins
would have barely had any time to pursue his art considering
that the remainder of his life was spent on one giant buying
spree, followed by the bureaucratic tedium of applying for
export permits and negotiating fees and duties.
Judging from several
auction catalogues annotated with prices realized (Boston
Athenæum), it is difficult to imagine that Hewins made much
money or, for that matter, broke even on his exported goods.
But whatever the pecuniary considerations, they did little to
deter him, with the result that by August 1853 he was
desperately in need of additional funds to keep his scheme
afloat. Hiram Powers obligingly lent him sixty
francesconi—roughly equivalent to sixty-six dollars—with the
promise that it be repaid within a month.[xxiv]
At this low ebb in his plans, Hewins’ correspondence with his
son nevertheless belies tremendous confidence that the items
he was supplying for markets in Boston and New York would
eventually find a demand and make a profit.
It was no easy matter
shipping thousands of paintings and objets d’art out of the
Duchy of Tuscany. It typically required the services of a
banker as well as the American consul, who collected the
various moneys owed to the local government. James Ombrosi had
acted in this last capacity for Americans for nearly thirty
years. Even though he had reconciled with the State Department
and was reinstated as Acting U.S. Consul to Florence in 1849,
the Government of Tuscany never accredited his office and only
bestowed upon him the meager title of “Commercial Agent.”
Ombrosi soon after went senile, and for the last two years of
his life his office was run by assistants—none of whom spoke a
word of English. The burdens of the consulate gradually
shifted to the Irishman John Leland Maquay Jr. (1791-1868) of
the Florentine banking firm Maquay, Pakenham and Smyth, as
well as to Hiram Powers, who found the constant applications
from travelers a major hindrance to his sculpture practice.
When Ombrosi died in March 1852, three months before Hewins’
arrival, the State Department rather audaciously appointed
Powers to the post without consulting him, to which the
sculptor quickly shot back: “Commercial agent! Obliged to keep
my office open from 9 till 3 and attend to everybody’s
business but my own and no pay! . . . I can’t afford to serve
my country in that way.”[xxv]
Everyone offered the consulship over the next two years essentially turned it down until Powers, alerted to Hewins’ financial instability, offered him the job.[xxvi] Hewins, who had already learned the labyrinthine bureaucratic system through his own wheeling and dealing and had familiarized himself with all the basic responsibilities of the office, readily accepted, and on 16 August 1854 he was officially commissioned by his government, much to the great relief of both Powers and Maquay.[xxvii] Not everyone, however, was optimistic about the decree, as a correspondent for the Newark Advertiser reported that October: “Mr. A. Hewins, a venerable artist from Boston, long resident in this city, has received from Washington the appointment of United States Commercial Agent. . . . As there is but little trade with the United States, the office is of no great value, and will scarcely pay for the trouble it may occasion.”[xxviii]
Furthermore, it appears
that American travelers had become spoiled by the social
standing and connections that Ombrosi had maintained within
the Florentine community—a facet of the job that Hewins was
either unable or unwilling to fulfill. As Freeman recorded,
Ombrosi’s greatest appeal was that “he devoted himself to the
service of every American citizen who arrived in the beautiful
capital of Tuscany, got them all indiscriminately
presentations to the grand duke [Leopold II], advised them where
to live, how to live, what to pay for it, and stood
between them and all impositions.”[xxix]
In contrast, the Florence correspondent for the New
York Times complained that Hewins was entirely unsuited
to the task. A dispatch dated 3 January 1855 stated that
“Americans desirous of being presented to this potentate and
of attending a series of court balls, would, under ordinary
circumstances, apply to their representative. But there is
none of any grade whatever in Florence, except Mr. Hewins,
whom nobody knows, and who rejoices in the title of United
States Commercial Agent. He has no exequatur, and is
recognized in no degree whatever by the Government. However,
American travelers usually have a banker, and this banker is
nine times out of ten Mr. Maquay . . . [who] makes out a list
of applicants, and forwards it to the Chamberlain, who draws
up the invitations in accordance with it.”[xxx]
Hewins seems to have
led a rather focused and insular life in his last year. During
the summer of 1855, while he prepared a shipment of
paintings—which dubiously claimed works by Poussin, Rubens,
Caravaggio, Guercino, and Titian—destined for the Boston
auction house of Broadhead & Co., tragedy stuck when a
cholera epidemic that had raged throughout Italy finally
reached Florence. As a precautionary measure, Powers sent his
family away, but he stayed, as did Hewins and Thomas Buchanan
Read. Sadly, on 24 June, Read’s wife and young daughter
succumbed to the epidemic, and he belatedly fled the city with
his surviving child. Even after this, in what many would
consider an ill-advised decision, both Powers and Hewins
remained in Florence. The devastating repercussions were felt
just under two months later when Hewins contracted the
bacterial disease and died on 18 August 1855.
[i]. Francis H. Allen, ed., A Boston Portrait-Painter Visits Italy: The Journal of Amasa Hewins 1830-1833 (Boston: Boston Athenæum, 1931), xiii.
[ii]. Allen, Journal, 29.
[iii]. Ibid., 45-46.
[iv]. President James Monroe appointed Ombrosi America’s first consul to Florence in 1819.
[v]. James Edward Freeman, Gatherings from an Artist’s Portfolio (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1877), 233-34.
[vi]. William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 2 vols. (New York: George P. Scott and Co., 1834), 2:390.
[vii]. Horatio Greenough to James Fenimore Cooper, 20 December 1830. Nathalia Wright, Letters of Horatio Greenough, American Sculptor (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 67.
[viii]. Allen, Journal, 57.
[ix]. Ibid., 63.
[x]. Ibid., 66.
[xi]. Ibid., 74.
[xii]. Ibid., 77.
[xiii]. Thomas Cole Journal, 12 April 1832. Thomas Cole Papers, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan.
[xiv]. Ellen Strong Bartlett, “The Amistad Captives. An Old Conflict between Spain and America,” New England Magazine, n.s. 22, no. 1 (March 1900): 82.
[xv]. William E. Hutchings, Description of Hutchings’ Grand Classical Panorama of the Sea and Shores of the Mediterranean (Boston: George C. Rand and Co. Printers, 1848), 49.
[xvi].Ibid.
[xvii]. Allen, Journal, xv.
[xviii]. Hutchings, Panorama, 49.
[xix]. Ibid., 4.
[xx]. Ibid., 48.
[xxi]. Randal L. Holton and Charles A. Gilday, “Moses B. Russell: Yankee Miniaturist,” Magazine Antiques (November 2002): 165.
[xxii]. Amasa Hewins to Charles A. Hewins, 31 October 1853. Amasa Hewins Papers, Boston Athenæum.
[xxiii]. Allen, Journal, xviii.
[xxiv]. Amasa Hewins to Hiram Powers, 22 August 1853. Hiram Powers Papers, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.
[xxv]. Richard P. Wunder, Hiram Powers: Vermont Sculptor, 1805-1873, 2 vols. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 1:280.
[xxvi]. For a good description of everyone who was offered the consulship in the two years after Ombrosi’s death, see Wunder, Hiram Powers, 280.
[xxvii]. Howard R. Marraro, Diplomatic Relations between the United States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: Instructions and Despatches, 1816-1861, 2 vols. (New York: S. F. Vanni, 1952), 42-43.
[xxviii]. Newark Advertiser, as quoted in New York Times, 26 October 1854.
[xxix]. Freeman, Gatherings, 234.
[xxx]. Dick Tinto, “Dick Tinto on His Travels: A Ball at the Palace—The Grand Duke—The Heir Who Was Not Sent to Bed Before the Party Was Over—The Wit of the Occasion—Italian Opera at Home, &c., &c.,” New York Times, 8 February 1855.
[xxxi]. I am grateful to Julia Bolton Holloway for putting me in touch with several of Hewins’ descendants, one of whom, Martha Coolidge Rudd, I am most obliged to for sharing genealogical information.
With the Sponsorship of the Comune di Firenze, the United States
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