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George Whiting Flagg - a South Carolina
Artist
George Whiting Flagg And His South Carolina
Portraits
Charleston County - South Carolina
Source: George Whiting Flagg and His
South Carolina Portraits, by Barbara K. Nord © 1982 South Carolina
Historical Society.
When the nineteenth century
American artist George Whiting Flagg died in 1897 his obituary in
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography stated that "many of
his best works are in the South, among them the portraits of Mrs.
Gov. Aiken, Judge King and U. S. Minister Gadsden, also his 'Shylock
and Jessica.' " Today however this artist and his work are almost
totally forgotten, even in the South. If it were not for the fact
that Flagg's portraits of James Shoolbred Gibbes. the founder of the
Gibbes Art Gallery in Charleston, and of his wife, are hanging in
that gallery, Flagg would also be forgotten even in the Charleston
area where some of the finest work of his career was painted, for
his portraits, still closely held by descendants of the sitters, are
seldom exhibited and most of his "ideal" or "fancy" pictures can no
longer be located.
However during the last few years there
has been a renewal of interest in nineteenth century American art.
About one hundred and fifty portraits and subject paintings by Flagg
have been identified by name, with some forty of these found to be
portraits of Charleston and Georgetown area residents. One of the
most noteworthy of these local portraits, as Flagg's obituary
stated, is certainly that of Mrs. William Aiken who was born
Harriett Lowndes in 1812 and married William Aiken in 1831. Flagg
probably painted Mrs. Aiken's portrait about 1857 for at that time
the former governor retired from Congress and remodeled his home on
Elizabeth Street in Charleston, permanently closing the blinds at
one end of the drawing room to form a background for the six by nine
foot, life-sized portrait of his wife. The Aiken House is now owned
by the Charleston Museum and the portrait still stands majestically
in its accustomed place in the drawing room.
When Governor
Aiken chose George Whiting Flagg to paint his wife's portrait the
artist had been working successfully in Charleston for some years
since coming there from the North. Although George had
beenborn in New Haven, Connecticut, he was a descendant of South
Caorlina families and had spent his boyhood in Georgetown and
Charleston whre he had earned a reputation as a child
prodigy.
For biographical information concerning the Flagg
family see Ernest Flagg, Genealogical Notes on the Founding of
New England (Hartford, 1926) and Norman G. Flagg and Lucius C.
S. Flagg, Flagg Family Records (Quincy, Ill, 1907).
Source: Paintings and
Sculputre in the Collecton of the National Academy of Design,
Page 193-4, by David Bernard Dearinger,
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George Whiting
Flagg
self-portrait | George
Flagg was the older brother of Jared Flagg. Montague and Charles
Noel Flagg were his nephews. The successful launching of his own
career owed much to the fact that he himself was the nephew of
Washington Allston. George and Jared's father, a doctor originally
from Newport, Rhode Island, had married Allston's widowed mother in
South Carolina, where he had served during the Revolutionary War.
These family roots and ties in New England and in South Carolin
determined much of George Flagg's career, as they did Allston's.
Flagg's extraordinarily early
demonstration of a talent and compulsion for drawing were all his
own, however. He was eight years old when his family moved to South
Carolina from New Haven, and it was at about this time that he began
demonstrationg his strong artistic tendencies. Although his parents
and grandmother initially discouraged him, the portrait he painted
of Bishop John England met with such admiration that they arranged
to have him to study with the itinerant portraitist James Bowman,
who was then in Charleston. In 1831, when Bowman went to Boston, the
sixteen-year-old Flagg was allowed to accompany him so that he might
come udner the guidance of Allston. He studied with Allston for
three years but also set up his own studio in Boston. He was
represented in the annual exhibitions of the Boston Athenacum in
1831, 1832, and 1833. In the latter year he moved to New Haven,
where his family was again living. There he continued working as a
portraitist and, as might be expected of an Allston protege, as a
painter of ideal subjects.
He first exhibited in an Academy
annual in 1834; the subjects of his three submissions clearly
identified his ambitions to history painting: Murder of Princes in
the Tower, Falstaff Playing King, and Portrait of a Lady Sleeping
(all New York Historical Society). These works immediately attracted
the attention of New York's most generous and enlightened patron of
the time, Luman Reed. He purchased the three works from the Academy
exhibition and arranged for and subsidized Flagg's departure for
study in Europe. He was in England, France, and Italy for about nine
months in 1834-35 - probably the usual period of a 'season', fall to
spring. In return for Reed's support, Flagg gave him all his
ideal-subject pictures; he retained income from portrait
commissions. Consequently, Reed's collection which was on public
view until his death in 1836 (and eventually passed to the New York
Historical Society), contained a disproportionately high number of
Flagg's youthful works.
After his return from Europe, Flagg
seems to have moved about a good deal. He was in Charleston,
probably for the witner of 1837-38, and in Boston in 1839. There he
did a cabinet portrait of Allston while Allston sat for Shobal
Clevenger for a bust. Flagg's fourth appearance in an Academy annual
was with a portrait sent from Boston in 1840. Later in 1840 he was
again in Charleston painting portraits, but for most of that decade
he worked in either New Haven or New York. He was represented in the
Academy annuals of 1842 and 1843, both years giving his address as
New Haven. He was elected to honorary membership in 1843 but in the
category of an amateur, as distinct from professional artist. At the
Academy annual meeting convened shortly after the opening of the
1844 exhibition, in which Flagg was again showing, he was made an
honorary professional - quite likely a correction of the previous
year's formal action.
Flagg gave a New York address for the
annual catalogue in 1844, as he did when he participated in the
annuals of 1846, 1850, and 1851. Whether he was actually living in
New York before 1851, when he was made an Academician - residency
then being requirement for regular membership - is not known. It is
interesting to note, however, that of the thirty-two paintings he
had shown at the Academy up to that time, only four had been
portraits. All the others were fancy pictures, scenes from
literature, or ideal subjects. In the 1851 exhibition he showed only
portraits - six of them.
Where the Academy would be expected to
reward efforts to practice the "higher" class of art, history
painting, it seems in this case to have demonstrated its approval of
a colleague having given up the avid pursuit.
In 1851, surely after the spring
meeting of the Academy and his election to full membership, Flagg
moved to Charleston. For the next eight years he enjoyed a highly
successful career as a portraitist in that city, although he never
entirely gave up the painting of ideal subjects. Eighteen of these
were offered for auction in Charleston in the spring of 1859, when
Flaegiances were decidedly divided between North and South, it was a
good time to leave the country. By 1861 Flagg was in London, where
he lived and worked until 1866. When he returned it was to New
Haven. It was from there that he sent a subject picture to the
Academy annual of 1866 and a miniature to the annual of 1867. His
only subsequent appearances in Academy exhibitions were in the
annuals of 1881, 1883, and 1885. During these years Flagg rarely
exhibited anywhere, although he probably continued his practice as a
portraitist. He lived in New Haven during most of the 1870's; city
directories noted that he conducted an art school. He retired to
Nantucket in
1879. |
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