Faces in the Gallery
Portraits at Dartmouth
AT the turn of the century, Dartmouth owned 139 portraits, many of them being displayed prominently, if somewhat unimaginatively, in a sky-lit room atop Wilson Hall (above). Today, the College's collection numbers more than 1,000 portraits, but as the quality and quantity grew with the years, fewer and fewer of the works were exhibited in public.
This month, in an exhibition organized by Arthur Blumenthal, curator of the art museum and galleries, Dartmouth's portraits come out of the closet. The show draws on 78 portraits from four centuries, beginning with a 1519 engraving by Durer and ending with a Modigliani watercolor of his mistress, done in 1919. There are artists famous and unknown, sitters prominent and forgotten, oil paintings and scrimshaw. The examples reproduced here were selected on the basis of quality, variety, and, in the case of the lithograph of Czar Nicholas I and his seasick family, sheer charm.
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER, Charles Drouet (etching), 1859
THOMAS EAKINS, John Joseph Borie (oil), 1896-98
SOUTHWORTH & HAWES, Daniel Webster (daguerreotype), 1850
HENRI-FRANCOIS RIESENER, Portrait of a Lady (oil), ca. 1818
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH, Ralph Waldo Emerson (bronze), 1879
PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR, Paul Cezanne (bronze), 1917
Above: UNKNOWN, Commodore Perry (scrimshaw), ca. 1855
Top Right: CORNELIUS JOHNSON, EnglishGentleman (oil), 1629
Right: UNKNOWN, Czar Nicholas I andFamily (lithograph), ca. 1823
Left: JOHN OPIE, An Englishman and HisChildren (oil), ca. 1800
Below Left: REMBRANDT VAN RIJN,Ephraim Bonus (etching), 1647
THOMAS COUTURE, Frederic Bazille (chalk), 1864
Left: WILLIAM BEECHEY, Robert Lindley (oil), ca. 1805
Top: WILLIAM GLACKENS, Anna Pavlova (oil), ca. 1915
Above: AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS, Robert LouisStevenson (bronze), 1899
