Robert Field (painter)

Robert Field (1769–1819) was a painter who was born in London, England, and died in Kingston, Jamaica. According to art historian Daphne Foskett, author of A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (1972), Field was "one of the best American miniaturists of his time." During Field's time in Nova Scotia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was the most professionally trained painter in present-day Canada.[1] He worked in the conventional neo-classic portrait style of Henry Raeburn and Gilbert Stuart.[2] His most famous works are two groups of miniatures of George Washington, commissioned by his wife Martha Washington. (Field's miniatures of both are in the Yale University Art Gallery permanent collection.)

Miniature of George Washington by Robert Field (1800), Yale University Art Gallery

America

He received his early training at the Royal Academy schools, London, in 1790. In 1794 he moved to the United States. He took up residence in the nation's then-capital, Philadelphia, Pa. There he immediately joined a group of artists led by Charles Willson Peale in establishing the Columbianum, or American Academy of the Fine Arts, which was eventually superseded by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1805.

Field spent 14 years in the United States, working as a miniature painter in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston; during this period he produced miniatures of George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and a wide range of people prominent in the social, economic, and political life of American society.[2] According to historian Harry Piers, Field was one of the four most highly sought American miniaturists in his time. Martha Washington herself commissioned Field in 1800 to paint a group of miniature as mementoes for friends and family, to commemorate the revered General and President on the one-year anniversary of his death. Two groups of miniatures of George Washington were produced by Field at Martha's request in late 1800, the first group showing him in civilian dress, the second as general in full uniform.[3]

Nova Scotia

When tensions between America and England started to rise in the lead up to the War of 1812, Field remained a loyalist and moved from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia (1808). He served in the 1st Company of Halifax Volunteer Artillery in 1812.[4] He became a member of the Charitable Irish Society of Halifax.[5]

He continued to produce miniatures, but he also painted more than 50 oil portraits of government officials, military officers, merchants, and assorted members of the Halifax "gentility"; among his subjects were Bishop Charles Inglis, former lieutenant governor Sir John Wentworth, Sir George Prevost, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Provo William Parry Wallis, and Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane, vice-admiral in the Royal Navy (whose portrait was shown at the Royal Academy exhibition in London in 1810).[2]

Jamaica

In 1816 he moved to Jamaica, settling first in Montego Bay and then in Kingston. He died on 9 August 1819, apparently of yellow fever, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the old "West Ground" cemetery, now called the Strangers' Burial Ground, near the Kingston parish church.[2]

Other works

References
  1. "Biography – VALENTINE, WILLIAM – Volume VII (1836-1850) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography". www.biographi.ca.
  2. "Biography – FIELD, ROBERT – Volume V (1801-1820) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography". www.biographi.ca.
  3. Piers, Harry, Robert Field: Portrait Painter in Oils, Miniature and Water-Colours and Engraver, New York, 1927.
  4. https://archive.org/details/halifaxhistory00akinuoft/page/271/mode/1up?q=tutty
  5. Canadian Biography Online
  6. "John Lewis Biography" (PDF). Retrieved 2020-01-28.
  7. National Gallery
  8. "Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society". Halifax – via Internet Archive.

Sources
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