Who Is That Frenchman on Seventh Street? Part Two: The Monument's Creator and Its Early History

J. Scott Hartley was a man who was not unused to praise. In his own day, Edward L. Wilson, publisher of Wilson’s Photographic Magazine, called him “prolific, variable in idea and illustration and the number of his works, always bearing the signs of an individual genius.” As James M. Goode notes in his volume Washington Sculpture: A Cultural History of Outdoor Sculpture in the Nation’s Capital, Hartley’s works are in major collections all over America and in Washington, D.C.

In addition to the Daguerre monument on the Seventh Street side of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Hartley was responsible for the busts of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne that are located in the central pavilion of the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building.

An interesting aside to his career is the story of a critique he gave of the relatively new practice of photography in August 1890. This lecture occurred at the National Museum (the Smithsonian Castle) during a convention of the National Association of Photographers. According to a report of the meeting published in the New York Times, Hartley was quite frank in his discourse on photography:

Mr. Hartley . . . began by criticizing the first picture that flashed on the screen without any words of preamble or any general remarks about art and its relations. Here was a man shattering some of the most cherished ideals of the camera workers, who had very decided views as to backgrounds and “accessories,” and who thought that all the interest in a portrait should be concentrated at the face and shoulders without resorting to any of the innumerable little devices of which professional photographers are so fond, and it is not to be wondered at that some of his hearers finally began to resent this iconoclasm by criticizing Dr. Hartley’s criticisms in turn.

Hartley was described as a man “at the top of his profession” in an 1890 issue of Wilson’s magazine. However, it seems clear that Hartley’s appreciation of the visual art profession was more traditional and did not extend to this newer, more technologically oriented discipline. In short, Hartley was a sculpture man, not a picture man.

It is also interesting to consider Jonathan Scott Hartley's Daguerre monument more fully in light of the monument’s early location. At the height of the age of scientism, Photographic Times and American Photographer ran an article in September 1890 imploring their readers to fulfill their obligations to fund the commission of the work, which was unveiled before it was completely paid for by the photographic society. In the article, the writer cites various comments made about the Daguerre monument’s location:

The locale of the Daguerre monument is in Washington D. C., in which lordly city the Photographers’ Convention has this year been held. . . . No time was lost in having all in readiness for the Convention, and one day was set aside to be exclusively devoted to giving honor to the illustrious Frenchman. Indeed, the unveiling of the monument thus prepared seems to have been considered as the great event of the Convention. The work . . . was designed and modeled by the sculptor, Mr. J. Scott Hartley, New York. It stands sixteen feet high, and is placed in the Rotunda of the National Museum.

As of the unveiling, the monument was displayed in one of the preeminent places of cultural salute in the U.S. capital, anchoring the central rotunda of the building that held America’s National Museum. Truly, taking into account the fact that the newly unveiled Washington monument—at the time having only been open for five years—and also taking into account the fact that the Lincoln Memorial would not be dedicated until May 30, 1922, there was a thirty-two-year period in which one of the foremost monuments on display in the cultural nucleus of the United States capital did not portray an American, but a Frenchman.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Next week, the conclusion, Part Three: Visual Impact and Cultural Significance

Sources:

James M. Goode, Washington Sculpture: A Cultural History of Outdoor Sculpture in the Nation’s Capital (rev. ed.; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

“The Daguerre Memorial,” Photographic Times and American Photographer (September 12, 1890): 20, 469.

Edward L. Wilson, “J. Scott Hartley.” Wilson’s Photographic Magazine (August 16, 1890): 508.