Portrait of Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe

ca. 1804

"During his first term as President, in March 1803, Thomas Jefferson appointed Benjamin Latrobe Surveyor of Public Buildings. It may have been in recognition of this honor that Latrobe's good friend Charles Willson Peale painted this portrait for his Philadelphia gallery of distinguished persons. . . . ". . . The Latrobe portrait is not listed in [the artist's] museum Accession Book, begun about [1804], so it was probably painted later that year or early in 1805. . . . ". . . The artist boldly blocked in the ear, and he deftly brushed in the curly hair, sometimes dragging a nearly dry brush in short arcs. The silver-rimmed spectacles pushed back into the hair are incompletely indicated, almost improvised. "The face is handsome, but the artist is concerned first with character and mind. It is a moody, introspective likeness, alive with intellect." (Kloss, William, et al. Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride. Washington, D.C.: The White House Historical Association, 2008.)

Source

Charles Willson Peale [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Benjamin_latrobe_by_peale.jpg

Rights

This image has been selected and made available by Classicizing Philadelphia using ARTstor's software tools. Classicizing Philadelphia makes this image available for non-commercial educational, scholarly, and artistic purposes and disclaims any liability for any use of the image or associated data. ARTstor has not pre-screened or selected this image, and therefore disclaims any liability for any use of this image. Should you have any legal objection to the use of this image, please notify Classicizing Philadelphia and ARTstor's Contact for Legal Notices.

Coverage

American

Format

oil on canvas

Peale, Charles Willson (American painter, 1741-1827), “Portrait of Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe,” Classicizing Philadelphia, accessed March 28, 2024, https://ds-omeka.haverford.edu/classicizingphiladelphia/items/show/426.