Thomas McKenney by Charles Loring Elliot
Thomas McKenney, statesman and entrepreneur, viewed the American Indian as his intellectual equal. Though many of his contemporaries were not so enlightened, the issues affecting the tribes were complex, and in the early days of the republic, men with varying beliefs affected policy—presidents like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, as well as diplomats like McKenney.
It was for a difference in viewpoints that McKenney was discharged from his office as Superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs after Jackson became president, but the ways in which McKenney had agreed with Jackson’s policies were surprising, considering that historian Andrew Cosentino notes, “McKenney had a profound understanding of and sympathy for Indians and their rapidly disappearing culture.”
National Portrait Gallery historian Sid Hart further clarifies this fascinating political relationship, explaining, “McKenney believed, as did Jefferson and many Americans in the early 19th century, that the Indian had to be assimilated. If this could be done, they would all agree that the Indian could live among white men as an equal. Jackson also believed in assimilation, but simultaneously viewed all Indian tribes as potential national security threats (as we would phrase it). Jackson’s context was the American Revolution and especially the War of 1812, when most Indian tribes were allied with Great Britain, and in Florida, with the Spanish. Jackson, our first president from the ‘West,’ also sided with the white settlers and their desire for land and settlement.”
However, McKenney’s advocacy on behalf of the Indian was limited. Hart adds, “McKenney was in favor of moving the Cherokees, Seminoles, and other tribes west of the Mississippi, as was Jackson. McKenney later charged that Jackson was too brutal in his methods, which may be the case, but the disagreement was not over taking the Indians’ land."
From his office in Georgetown, McKenney had also supervised trade with many tribes. Beginning with President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, many artists were employed to paint portraits of American Indians visiting Washington, D.C. during such trade and diplomatic missions. One of these artists, Charles Bird King, is estimated to have painted upwards of one hundred and twenty portraits from 1821 to 1830. Further exposing King’s sittings with the visiting tribes, artist Henry Inman copied much of King’s work.
Although he saw great humanitarian need to preserve Native American culture, Thomas McKenney was not altogether motivated through altruism. McKenney and partner, James Hall, planned to sell a large edition—three volumes—of an anthropological and historical work on Indian culture. McKenney used lithographs of the Inman portraits in his publication and, as Cosentino attests, “Since the lithographs are extraordinarily faithful reproductions of Inman’s copies [of Charles Bird King’s work], they reflect the originals almost equally well.”
Through the lenses of Henry Inman, and later, McKenney and Hall’s tome, The Indian Tribes of North America with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes, Charles Bird King’s portraits were made accessible to a broad audience. Without these reproductions, many of Charles Bird King’s likenesses from the 1821-1830 portraits would be lost; in January, 1865, a gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (in the building that is now called the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall) burned, destroying a large percentage of Native American portraits in the early collection, including many of those works by King.
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The fabulous circa 1856 oil on canvas portrait of Thomas McKenney by Charles Loring Elliot is a recent addition to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. The painting and the frame represent two firsts for the museum, its first representation of McKenney and first such elaborate rococo frame.
In the painting, Charles Loring Elliot represents Thomas McKenney—one of the country’s most important figures in establishing and implementing government policies concerning Native Americans—as a stately, white-haired older man wrapped in a fashionable blanket of the time.
Conservation records reveal that the work has had two major treatments, in 1890 and in 1940, both of which involved cleaning the painting and attaching the original canvas to an auxiliary fabric support. Recent examination of the portrait revealed that the tacking edges were removed and the wooden stretcher replaced. The paint surface exhibits numerous surface cracks and paint abrasions. Varnish on the surface of the painting has discolored, altering the painting’s original tonalities.
The Portrait Gallery’s painting conservator and head of conservation, Cindy Lou Molnar, undertook treatment to bring the painting back to the artist’s original intent. She carefully removed the yellowed varnish, revealing that the painting originally had a much cooler tone. Old retouched areas were also removed and in-painted with stable synthetic paints to help disguise surface cracks and paint abrasions. Molnar applied a non-yellowing varnish to saturate dark colors and give the painting a protective coating.
The elaborate rococo frame, probably original to the painting, was in an alarming state of disrepair. The ornate rectangular frame with an oval spandrel has an elaborate 6 x 10-inch cartouche at the top center that protrudes three to four inches from the frame plane. The shape of the frame and the large ornamental cartouche at the top indicate that the frame would have been water-gilded to produce a shiny surface. The painting would have been hung high, and the frame ornament overhang would reflect light from a poorly lit museum to highlight the face of the portrait.
When acquired, the original water-and-oil gilding had been covered with a dull, bronze-colored paint that was completely inappropriate for the painting and the period. Ornamentation was missing and crude repairs were in evidence.
The Portrait Gallery does not have a frame conservator on staff, but we were able to contract out the frame treatment through a generous grant from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee.Treatment was extensive and involved removing the brass metal leaf on the surface of the frame to expose the original water-and-oil gilding. Previous restorations using wood putty and plaster of paris were removed. Areas of lost and damaged ornamentation were repaired and replaced with plaster casts. Loose, flaking gesso and gilding was consolidated with an appropriate adhesive, and major losses to the frame’s surface were filled with gesso putty. Areas of losses were coated with a yellow bole (fine clay) in preparation for gilding, and water gilding was completed with twenty-three-karat gold leaf. Highlights were burnished with agate stone, and the frame was toned to match surface patinas appropriate to its age.
--Warren Perry and Lou Molnar, with special thanks to Sid Hart and Mark Gulezian
Cited:
Cosentino, Andrew F. The Paintings of Charles Bird King. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977.
For further reading:
Truettner, William H. Paintings Indians and Building Empires in North America, 1710-1840. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
