The go to source for Creatives seeking Resources and Insights

 

 

 

 

email logo youtube iconfacebook icontwitter icon Instagram
Share

Share |

Travel and Culture:

History Unveiled in Mount Clare House Portraits

By JOAN WENNER
ART TIMES Aug 2011 online

Detail showing Mount Clare from 1869 lithograph "Edward Sachse's Bird's Eye View of City of Baltimore 1869" with original at Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Detail showing Mount Clare from 1869 lithograph "Edward Sachse's Bird's Eye View of City of Baltimore 1869" with original at Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore

THE DISTINCTIVE COLORFUL Maryland Civil War Trails sign visible in Carroll Park on Washington Boulevard near its intersection with Bayard Street in Baltimore City notes the land used as a Union army training camp during the Civil War. With the house then a hotel, it had previously been the 18th century plantation of one Charles Carroll, a prominent former barrister (and a distant relative of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), who along with Margaret Tilghman Carroll, built the two-story Georgian style brick summer home in 1760. While the history of the appropriately named Camp Carroll from 1861-1864 is impressive and Mount Clare has staged an ongoing special exhibit to commemorate the 150th Sesquicentennial, the artistic gems inside of the adjacent Mount Clare House (www.mountclare.org) are certainly also impressive. “Minutes from the Inner Harbor, centuries away” as its protectors like to say, the Historic Register listed house with its extensive collection of art and artifacts and period furnishings with one of the best views of Baltimore City looking from the west to downtown , is a tribute to its conservation and preservation as a museum and a sought after event venue.

Portraits of Charles and Margaret Carroll hang in parlor amid 1770s Louis XV parlor set acquired through an heir. Photo: Photo by Dan Meyers
Portraits of Charles and Margaret Carroll hang in parlor amid 1770s Louis XV parlor set acquired through an heir. Photo: Photo by Dan Meyers

It is said Mount Clare House is the oldest extant Colonial building of architectural significance in Baltimore. Various outbuildings were all destroyed after the house fell out of family hands in 1840. After the Civil War ended in 1865, a group of German men leased the structure using it as a beer garden until 1890 when the city of Baltimore purchased it and 70 acres for a park. In 1917 Maryland’s National Society of Colonial Dames took over operation and additionally providing needed repairs and redecoration. The City reconstructed the wings and hyphens in 1910 though not exactly resembling the original dependencies. It is maintained today through the cooperative efforts of the Society, the State of Maryland and local city departments, notes knowledgeable Executive Director Jane Woltereck.

Inside the Mount Clare House Museum  is a grouping of paintings belonging specifically to the Carrolls and their heirs. One of these, a portrait of Charles Carroll was completed about 1763, according to Curator Debbie Farthing, by American Colonial-era oil on canvas painter John Hesselius (1728-1778). Another hangs in the Baltimore Museum of Art and a portrait of Margaret hangs at the Maryland Historical Society and thought to be a wedding portrait, Farthing says. The artist is perhaps best known for his portraits of one of Virginia’s first families, of Philadelphia Judge Joshua Maddox and family, and of John Hanson (first President of the Continental Congress) at around 1770.

Charles and Margaret T. Carroll portraits by Charles Willson Peale in Charles Carroll's first-floor study. Photo: Courtesy Mount Clare Museu
Charles and Margaret T. Carroll portraits by Charles Willson Peale in Charles Carroll's first-floor study. Photo: Courtesy Mount Clare Museum

There are two large paintings of Margaret in Mount Clare’s gardens and Charles in his study by native Marylander Charles William Peale (1741-1827) also in 1770. Peale is said to have observed the techniques, as such they were, of Hesselius, and would become the “patriarch of what became an extraordinary family of American painters.” Along with others, Charles Carroll had funded Peale’s studies abroad and welcomed another portrait of Charles’ niece, Mary Clare Maccubbin Brice with her daughter Mary Clare that came to Mount Clare House through an heir.

In the collection of paintings are additional portraits of family members by artists Robert Edge Pine, John Wesley Jarvis and Robert Feke, among others, and all of recognized portraiture talents. Robert Edge Pine, ca.1720-1788,the English portrait and historical painter and son of engraver John Pine, came to Philadelphia and painted many of the Founding Fathers including George Washington. Pine also won awards for historical subjects in exhibitions of the Society of Arts, London. Works of his are displayed at numerous London galleries, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greenburg, Pa, and are held also in private collections.

View of parlor with painting of Margaret Carroll (and teapot with family's crest).     Photo: Courtesy Mount Clare Museum
View of parlor with painting of Margaret Carroll (and teapot with family's crest).
    Photo: Courtesy Mount Clare Museum

John Wesley Jarvis, the English-born painter (ca.1780-1840) utilizing oil on canvas as his medium, began as an engraver in Philadelphia and is generally said to b e America’s most fashionable portrait painter of a wealthy clientele like the Carrolls. A self-portrait was first shown at Peale’s Baltimore Museum in 1822. Growing up in Philadelphia he later traveled to major cities including Baltimore for commissions. He would die in New York. And Robert Feke, another recognized Colonial-era portrait painter was born at Long Island, New York, and created fifteen portraits depicting the emerging Colonial aristocracy plus some fifty more works have been attributed to him.

Along with Charles’ 1770 mahogany secretary desk and c.1780’s Louis XV style parlor set of Margaret’s, other items of furniture throughout Mount Clare survive with many pieces of their silver including a c. 1764 chocolate pot and a pair of c. 1767 goblets, porcelain pieces  with a 1760s dessert set, and Chinese export dishes in a red and blue pattern known via the heirs to be those personally belonging to Margaret Carroll.

North facing portico taken in 1933  Historic American Building Survey.     Photo: Courtesy U.S. Department of Interior
North facing portico taken in 1933
Historic American Building Survey.
    Photo: Courtesy U.S. Department of Interior

Once outside after admiring the interior and its well-cared for treasures, turn around and take a last glimpse at Mount Clare’s north facing or front façade featuring a projecting portico with a classical entablature, the one-story chamber rising above the portico displaying a Palladian window and a pedimented gable roof. Stroll the expansive grounds and visualize those bygone days. After all, seeing all the portraits of Charles and Margaret hung in just the right and most pleasing places around the house, you almost feel like family.

(Joan Wenner — joan_writer@yahoo.com — , a long-recognized writer about Civil War History, Sites, and Museums, lives in Martinsville, VA.)