The Addison's collection numbers over 20,000 objects. While the galleries can only accommodate a fraction of the collection, virtually the entire collection is accessible through the Museum Learning Center.

Placeholder Text

Click here to download Museum Learning Center Portfolio Guides.

Collection

Masterworks from the Collection: 50th Anniversary Exhibition

<<first <previous
next> last>>


View larger image
Bookmark and Share
Artist(s): Ralph Earl (Leicester, MA, May 11, 1751 - Aug 16, 1801, Bolton, CT)
Title: Reverend Nathaniel Taylor
Date: c. 1790
Dimensions: 47 3/4 in. x 37 in. (121.29 cm x 93.98 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Museum purchase, 1941.23

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Themes: MLC Portfolio: Global Interactions
Periods and Styles: Early America
Themes: MLC Portfolio: American Identity

Object Information

Ralph Earl (1751–1801), the eldest of four sons born to a prominent patriot and landowner in Worcester County, Massachusetts, spent most of his career as a successful painter of rural Connecticut patrons. Determined to be a painter at a young age, Earl refused to join the militia and ultimately was denounced as a loyalist, forcing him to flee to England in 1778. There he not only avoided imprisonment but was able to establish himself as a painter and learn from English examples. Having had little training available to him beyond the examples of fellow Connecticut painter Winthrop Chandler, and Boston artists Henry Pelham and Pelham's illustrious half-brother, John Singleton Copley, Earl then was able to meet English-trained artists and to secure patrons for portraits. Earl established himself first in Norwich; by 1784, he had moved to London, made the acquaintance of Benjamin West, and developed a style based on English portraiture. Shortly after his return to New York in 1785, Earl found himself in debtor's prison. Finally securing his release through portraits painted in jail, Earl moved to Connecticut in 1788 to pursue the remainder of his career as a portrait painter of prominent rural patrons. Earl's portraits document the pride  of place felt by his patriotic Connecticut patrons. The artist portrays his subjects in their contexts, surrounded by the comfortable interiors of their homes, often with the local Connecticut landscape seen through windows.

Earl's portrait of Reverend Nathaniel Taylor was painted in New Milford, Connecticut where Earl painted a total of nineteen members of the Taylor and Boardman families. Taylor's portrait was painted at the time when he retired as the second town minister, a post he had held for fifty-two years. Earl also painted Taylor's wife, Tamar Boardman Taylor, daughter of the first town minister, Reverend Daniel Boardman, as well as the Taylor's son, in Colonel William Taylor, and his wife and son, in Mrs. William Taylor and Son Daniel. Earl's choice of a setting, with the minister standing behind an austere pulpit before a shuttered window, reflects the conservative practicality of the sitter. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser's recent study, Ralph Earl The Face of the Young Republic, quotes a ministerial colleague of Taylor: "as a preacher .. . he held high rank. His preaching was generally of a plain and practical cast, fitting to edify both the humbler and the more intelligent classes . . . .He had a fine manly voice, and his manner in the pulpit, while it was free from all artificial airs, was well fitted to awaken and hold the attention . . . .No one was more earnest than he in enjoining habits of temperance and industry."

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Ralph Earl, 1751-1801, Whitney Museum of American Art, 10/16/1945 - 1/13/1946
Likeness of America, 1680–1820, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 7/5/1949 - 9/4/1949
Loan to Stevens Memorial Library, Stevens Memorial Library, 5/18/1951 - 9/24/1951
Scope in Collecting [25th Anniversary Exhibition], Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/19/1956 - 12/24/1956
Artistic Highlights of American History, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/10/1958 - 3/23/1958
Living with Design, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/22/1959 - 10/23/1959
Art in American History, Addison Gallery of American Art, 7/22/1962 - 10/28/1962
From the Archives of American Art: The Role of the Macbeth Gallery, American Federation of Arts, 10/8/1962 - 5/31/1963
The Works, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/7/1969 - 2/22/1970
Breaking Away: Paintings and Drawings of the Colonial and Federal Periods, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/3/1980 - 11/2/1980
Masterworks from the Collection: 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/9/1981 - 6/14/1981
Masterworks of American Art from the Addison Gallery Collection, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., 10/6/1981 - 10/31/1981
Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic, Wadsworth Atheneum, 11/1/1991 - 7/12/1992
Faces of the Addison: Portraits from the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/23/1994 - 7/31/1994
Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/13/1996 - 7/31/1996
Identity and Intention: Two Centuries of American Portraiture, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/4/2001 - 12/30/2001
Art and Craft, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/30/2005 - 7/31/2005
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/19/2013 - 3/10/2013
[Permanent Collection 201-5], Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/12/2014 - 7/31/2014
The Art of Ambition in the Colonial Northeast, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2019 - 12/15/2019

Your current search criteria is: Exhibition is "Masterworks from the Collection: 50th Anniversary Exhibition"