The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (52 page)

7
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, May 5, 1816 [
sic
] (actually written on May 5, 1817].

8
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, April 16, 1817.

9
. Ibid.

10
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, letters of March 6 and June 6, 1818.

11
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, May 12, 1817.

12
. 1876 Bill of Complaint, letter 2.

13
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, May 12, 1817. In this letter, he speaks of the expense of paying for the education and maintenance of three young children, most likely referring to the Jones children. In 1866 Eliza Jones (by then Eliza Tranchell) said that Eliza Jumel sent her, her sister, Louisa, and her brother, Stephen, to school in Connecticut in 1817, but it would have been Stephen who paid their tuition.

14
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, May 5, 1816 [
sic
] (actually written on May 5, 1817].

15
. Shelton, 156.

16
. Ibid., 156–57.

17
. Ibid., 157.

18
. NYHS-JP,
box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, April 16, 1817.

19
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, letters of May 5, 12, and 28, 1817.

20
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, June 6, 1818; NYHS-JP, box 2, folder E, Eliza Jumel to “Mr. Banard” [
sic
], October 6, 1817.

21
. Lillian B. Miller,
Patrons and patriotism: The encouragement of the fine arts in the United States 1790–1860
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 147.

22
. Carrie Rebora, “The American Academy of Fine Arts, New York 1802–1842” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1990), 3, 35–36.

23
. NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Minutes, 25 (October 4, 1817).

24
. Ibid., 26, and NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Correspondence 1: no. 37.

25
. NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Correspondence 1: no. 37.

26
.
Commercial Advertiser
, September 1, 1817, [3] (advertisement).

27
. “Communication,”
New-York Evening Post
, September 2, 1817, [2].

28
. “Communicated,”
New-York Columbian
, September 3, 1817, [2].

29
. The exception was the
Battle of Cavalry
.

30
. NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Correspondence 1: no. 37; “Communication,”
New-York Daily Advertiser
, September 3, 1817, [2]; NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Minutes, December 6, 1817:33.

31
. Wayne Craven, “Introduction: Patronage and collecting in America, 1800–1835,” in
Mr. Luman Reed's picture gallery: A pioneer collection of American art
, by Ella M. Foshay (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the New-York Historical Society, 1990), 12–13.

32
. Henry Johnson,
Descriptive catalogue of the art collections of Bowdoin College
, 3rd ed. (Brunswick, ME: The Record Press, 1906), 5, 43–44.

33
. Jessica Lanier, “Martha Coffin Derby's Grand Tour: ‘It's impossible to travel without improvement,'”
Women's Art Journal
28, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2007), 41–42.

34
. Craven, “Introduction: Patronage and collecting,” 14–15.

35
. Maurie D. McInnis, “‘Picture mania': Collectors and collecting in Charleston,” in
In pursuit of refinement: Charlestonians abroad 1740–1860
, exh. cat. by Maurie D. McInnis, in collaboration with Angela D. Mack, with essays by J. Thomas Savage, Robert A. Leath, and Susan Ricci Stebbins (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 44–46.

36
. Craven, “Introduction: Patronage and collecting,” 17; Rebora, “The American Academy of Fine Arts,” 36, 341–42, 347.

37
. Craven, “Introduction: Patronage and collecting,” 17–18, 11.

38
. With the term “private citizen,” I exclude art dealers, most notably Michael Paff in New York and the firm of Blake and Cunningham in Boston. The number of paintings they imported is unknown. Joseph Allen Smith might have offered competition to Eliza, but of thirteen cases of paintings he assembled in Italy in the 1790s, most were seized during the French occupation of the Italian peninsula before he could ship them home (McInnis, “‘Picture mania': Collectors and collecting in Charleston,” 46). Gilmor, another potential rival, had only forty-five paintings in 1817, although he would purchase some
fifty more during a trip to Europe in 1817 to '18 and by 1828 would possess approximately 230 paintings (a mix of American and European works) (Lance Lee Humphries, “Robert Gilmor, Jr. (1774–1848): Baltimore collector and American art patron” [PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1998], 1:183, 185, 318). During the eighteenth century, the largest groups of European paintings reaching the future United States appear to have been collections that practicing artists brought with them. Robert Edge Pine, an English artist, brought along one hundred or more historical paintings, portraits, and prints to Philadelphia in 1782, although it is not clear whether the pictures were painted by him or others. See Peter Benes, “‘A few monstrous great Snakes': Daniel Bowen and the Columbian Museum, 1789–1816,”
New England collectors and collections
, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University Scholarly Publications, 2006), 27. Among eighteenth-century American private collectors, the largest collection may have been Thomas Jefferson's, with approximately forty-one paintings and a rich selection of prints, watercolors, and stone and plaster busts (Howard, “Thomas Jefferson's art gallery,” 597–600 [see chap. 15, n. 9]). The collections of James Hamilton and his nephew William Hamilton are less well documented, but are unlikely to have exceeded Jefferson's in size. For the Hamiltons, see James A. Jacobs, “William Hamilton and Woodlands: A construction of refinement in Philadelphia,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
130, no. 2 (April 2006): 203–207.

39
. Dianne Sachko Macleod, “Eliza Bowen Jumel: Collecting and cultural politics in early America,”
Journal of the History of Collections
13, no. 1 (2001), 68.

40
. “Fine arts. Review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 27, 1817, [2].

41
. “Review,”
National Advocate
, September 12, 1817, [2].

42
. “Fine arts. Review—continued,”
National Advocate
, October 2, 1817, [2].

43
. “Fine arts review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 18, 1817, [2].

44
. “Review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 30, 1817, [2]. In addition, Smith complained that the perspective in the painting was inversed: “the head being thrown back, in the act of singing, would naturally
foreshorten
the face—but in this the features are
elongated
.” Smith's description matches
King David Playing the Harp
, by Simon Vouet, today in the collection of the Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery.

45
. “Fine arts,”
National Advocate
, September 16, 1817, [2].

46
. “Fine arts. Review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 27, 1817, [2] (for the first three quotations in this paragraph); “Fine arts review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 18, 1817, [2].

47
. “Fine arts review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 18, 1817, [2].

48
. “Fine arts. Review—continued,”
National Advocate
, September 20, 1817, [2].

49
. NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Minutes, November 8, 1817: n.p. (between
pages 27
and
28
).

50
. NYHS, American Academy of the Fine Arts, Minutes, December 6, 1817:33, and Correspondence 1: no. 37 verso.

51
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, March 6, 1818.

52
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, June 6, 1818.

53
. Ibid.

54
. Ibid.

55
.
Ibid.

1
. “Daily Advertiser Marine List. Port of New-York,”
New-York Daily Advertiser
, August 21, 1818, [2].

2
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, July 16, 1818. That he still occupied the rue de Cléry address is clear from a letter book he used during this time period (NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 6, letter book of Stephen Jumel; see, for example, the letter from Stephen Jumel to a Monsieur Laveau, September 5, 1820).

3
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, November 9, 1818.

4
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, July 27, 1819.

5
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, January 20, 1819.

6
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, January 23, 1819.

7
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, February 5, 1819.

8
. Ibid.

9
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, March 23, 1819.

10
. Ibid.

11
.
Mercantile Advertiser
, March 1, 1819, [2] (advertisement for a coachman and housemaid).

12
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, March 23, 1819.

13
. Clyde A. Haulman, “The Panic of 1819: America's first great depression,”
Financial History
(Winter 2010): 22.

14
. Ibid., 20–22.

15
. Samuel Resneck, “The depression of 1819, a social history,”
American Historical Review
39, no. 1 (October 1933), 42.

16
. Ibid.

17
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, July 27, 1819.

18
. Ibid. (for all of the quotations in this paragraph).

19
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, September 1, 1819; NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 6, letter book of Stephen Jumel, letter to James B. Durand, July 30, 1820, and letter to Monsieur Labat, September 5, 1820.

20
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, September 1, 1819; NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 6, letter book of Stephen Jumel, Stephen Jumel to James B. Durand, July 30, 1820.

21
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 3, Stephen Jumel to Eliza Jumel, September 1, 1819.

22
. Ibid.

23
. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 6, letter book of Stephen Jumel, Stephen Jumel to Monsieur Fouache et Fils, August 27, 1820.

24
. Clarence Edward Macartney and Gordon Dorrance,
The Bonapartes in America
(Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company, 1939), 86–90.

25
. New York, Silo's Fifth Avenue Art Galleries,
Catalogue of the Jumel Collection of Napoleonics [sic] relics and other historical articles removed from the famous Jumel Mansion
(1916), no. 131.

26
. NYHS-AHMC,
Jumel, Madame Stephen, typewritten English transcript of a letter from Joseph Bonaparte to Eliza Jumel.

27
.
Mercantile Advertiser
, April 28, 1820, [2] (the advertisement appeared six more times through May 18, 1820);
New-York Evening Post
, February 20, 1821, [4].

28
.
New-York Evening Post
, March 19, 1821, [3] (advertisement for the auction).

29
. Fontaine,
Catalogue of original paintings
(see chap. 15, n. 3).

30
.
Letters from John Pintard … II: 1821–1827
, 30–32 (see chap. 7, n. 9).

31
. Resneck, “The depression of 1819,” 33.

32
.
Letters from John Pintard … II: 1821–1827
, 31.

33
. Ibid.

34
. For the sale of Fesch's paintings, which took place in June 1816, see
Catalogue de tableaux des trois écoles …
(Paris: Chez Thiesson et al., [1816]). No. 47 in the Fesch catalogue is probably identifiable with Eliza's
Tap room or tabagia
by Thomas van Apshoven (Fontaine,
Catalogue of original paintings
, no. 208), and it is possible that no. 127 could be her
St. Marguerite
by Parmeggiano (Fontaine,
Catalogue of original paintings
, no. 182). Fesch also owned a portrait of Madame de Montespan by Pierre Mignard (no. 87). While it is tempting to identify this with Eliza's
Miss De Montaspan
[
sic
] by Mignard (Fontaine,
Catalogue of original paintings
, no. 194), the descriptions of the latter provided by reviewers of the 1817 exhibition (“Review,”
American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review
1, no. 6 (October 1817), 456; “Review,”
National Advocate
, September 12, 1817, [2]) do not match the description of Fesch's painting provided in the 1816 sale catalogue, making it clear that her portrait of Montespan was not the one owned by the cardinal.

35
.
New-York Evening Post
, June 13, 1821, [3] (advertisement placed by M. Ward & Co.).

36
.
National Advocate
, June 14, 1821, [3] (advertisement placed by M. Ward & Co.).

37
. Silo's Fifth Avenue Art Galleries,
Catalogue of the Jumel Collection
, nos. 308, 313, 314, 318, 319, 320, 321, 323, 328, 330, and possibly 315 and 316, identifiable with, respectively, Fontaine,
Catalogue of original paintings
, nos. 91, 89, 137, 16, 110, 90, 76, 7, 46, 148, 136, and 80. A nineteenth-century French cut-glass chandelier today in the parlor of the mansion could have been the one offered for purchase at the Park Hall Auction Room. In addition, a set of ten mahogany chairs at the mansion might have been part of the group of three dozen chairs offered for sale.