Portrait of DeWitt Clinton

Object Details

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Object Essay

“The meekness of Quakerism will do in religion, but not in politics,” wrote De Witt Clinton (1769–1828), and this forceful portrait captures the disdainful manner that made him “personally unpopular” though “generally admired and respected as a man of liberal ideas and administrative competence.”^{1_{DAB, s.v. “De Witt Clinton.”}} The painting conveys as well the impressive stature of the man: six feet tall and somewhat fleshy, with prominent eyes, he was nicknamed “Magnus Apollo” by contemporaries. (For objects owned by Clinton, see Acc. No. 64.19 and 75.40.)

Clinton is seen as he looked at the beginning of his long tenure as Mayor of New York City, for which he had resigned his seat in the United States Senate in October 1803. The city commissioned his portrait, together with several others, from John Trumbull, who had returned from England to establish a studio in New York. A decade earlier, Trumbull had painted two full-length portraits, including one of then-Governor George Clinton (1791), whose nephew, De Witt, was his private secretary at the time. This fact may have further influenced the city’s choice of Trumbull to paint the portrait of the new Mayor, which he did in 1805.^{2_{Jaffe, 208–9 and 308. The replica for the Chamber of Commerce is not mentioned. See also Cooper 1982, esp. 101–5.}}

This replica was commissioned by members of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York in 1807.^{3_{Catalogue of Portraits in the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York (New York: New York Chamber of Commerce, 1924), 76, no. 59, and p. 25, illus.}} Despite De Witt Clinton’s anti-Federalism, he and Trumbull shared aristocratic taste, borne out in the studied formality of this portrait. Abandoning the verve, directness, and colorism of his early portraits, Trumbull now introduces an unbending neoclassicism. He presents the figure in a large half-length (“kit-kat”) format, with a resolutely pyramidal torso and head. The face itself is very carefully structured with controlled brushstrokes.

Behind Clinton is a draped column, and he holds a book upon a lectern. Although traditional, these symbols of strength, honor, and especially learning were strikingly appropriate to Clinton at that moment. His service as Mayor was faithful and tireless. In particular, as the first President and principal spirit of the Public School Society, founded in 1805, and chief American proponent of the Lancastrian movement to teach the underprivileged, “he was perhaps the most effective personal force for public education in the history of the state.”^{4_{DAB, s.v. “De Witt Clinton.”}} Both the attributes and the appearance of the man convey the classical virtue of gravitas. The portrait is a departure from Trumbull’s youthful romanticism, so suited to the rush of Revolutionary events; in its weighty dignity and solemnity, the portrait of De Witt Clinton has the moral resonance of the new republic.

William Kloss

Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.