ATTRIBUTED TO CHARLES PEALE POLK (1767-1822)
ATTRIBUTED TO CHARLES PEALE POLK (1767-1822)
ATTRIBUTED TO CHARLES PEALE POLK (1767-1822)
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PROPERTY OF A PORTUGUESE FAMILY
ATTRIBUTED TO CHARLES PEALE POLK (1767-1822)

ELIAS BOUDINOT

Details
ATTRIBUTED TO CHARLES PEALE POLK (1767-1822)
ELIAS BOUDINOT
oil on canvas
26 x 22 in.
Provenance
By descent in a Portuguese family

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Lot Essay

An accomplished copy of Charles Willson Peale’s 1782 bust portrait, this likeness of American founding father Elias Boudinot (1740-1821) was most likely rendered by the artist’s nephew and student, Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822). Orphaned at a young age, Polk lived with his uncle and was instructed by him in the art of portrait painting. Polk’s earliest works, of Washington and Rochambeau, are from May 1783 and like here, are copies of busts painted by Peale intended for his gallery of eminent men. Peale painted Boudinot in the oval bust format in about 1782, and then again in 1784 in an enlarged version showing Boudinot holding a paper entitled “Proclamation of Peace with Great Britain/ 1783” (now at Princeton University Art Museum, y1954-266). Here, Polk has rendered the 1782 pose in a larger format and probably painted the portrait during his professional years in Philadelphia between 1785 and 1791. The execution is especially skilled and as noted by Linda Crocker Simmons in other early works by Polk, it is likely that he was assisted by another artist, very possibly his uncle (see Linda Crocker Simmons, Charles Peale Polk 1767-1822: A Limner and His Likenesses (Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1981), pp. 3-5).

A Princeton graduate and eminent lawyer, Boudinot was among the foremost leaders of the Revolutionary cause. He first served as a Colonel, was then elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, and from 1777 to the war’s conclusion, ran an extensive spy operation. From 1782 to 1783, he was President of the United States Congress and later, member of the New Jersey Convention that ratified the Constitution in 1787, a member of the US Congress, and in 1795, appointed by President Washington as Director of the United States Mint. Born in Philadelphia, Boudinot retired to Burlington, New Jersey where he pursued his academic interests in religious subjects.

This portrait was likely first owned by Ignatius Palyart (1762-1818), a Portuguese merchant and diplomat, who was actively involved in Philadelphia’s economic, political and cultural life during the late eighteenth century. It has descended in a Portuguese family, direct descendants of Ignatius’ brother, Eugénio (b. 1761), for as long as its recent owners can recall.
The son of Joaquim José Palyart (1735-1802) and Francisca Teresa de Clamouse Browne (1740-1807), Ignatius Palyart was born in Lisbon and can be first documented in Philadelphia in 1785, when he in partnership with the Joyce Brothers advertised the sale of goods recently imported from Portugal (Pennsylvania Packet, May 17, 1785, p. 1). The next year, he first appears on the city’s tax rolls, listed in the New Market ward. He appears to have travelled back to Portugal in 1789, when he is recorded as marrying Francisca (Frances) Paula in Lisbon. If painted before this time, it is possible that the portrait accompanied Palyart on the journey and was left with his family at that time.

Palyart had soon returned to Philadelphia where in the 1790 US Federal census, he is recorded as a merchant living on the east side of Water Street. The same year, he was appointed by the Queen of Portugal as the Consul-General “from the Court of Lisbon” to the United States and on December 7, 1790, was formally presented to President George Washington by Thomas Jefferson, then serving as Secretary of State (Pennsylvania Mercury, August 3, 1790, p. 3). Ignatius Palyart continued his mercantile pursuits alongside his role as Consul-General in Philadelphia for at least the next fifteen years. He supported local causes, such as the Pennsylvania Hospital and the Catholic church, indicating he was well integrated into Philadelphia society (Pennsylvania Gazette, March 26, 1788, p. 1; “A Philadelphia Subscription List of about AD 1795,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Pennsylvania 6: 4 (December 1895), pp. 423-425). Beginning in 1800, he encountered financial difficulties and by 1810, he had moved to London with his wife and daughter, Evelina. As he did in Philadelphia, Palyart pursued his mercantile business alongside serving as a diplomat for Portugal. He died in London in 1818 and if the portrait was still in his possession at this time, it likely passed to his daughter and then returned to Portugal after she was widowed in 1844.

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