Painted Portraits: Illuminating Family Histories for Generations

By Carol Summerfield

From movies and television shows, we have all seen the hall or the stairway bedecked with dozens of paintings of different generations in gilded frames, in their place of honor on the wall of a stately home. These ancestral portrait collections have been a part of society -- particularly European high society -- for hundreds of years.

That tradition of having portraits of the family patriarchs and matriarchs migrated with its people to the United States. And for a good reason: family portraits were integral to maintaining the memory of those who had come before. Before photography, paintings and drawings were the only ways to capture someone’s image. And for those who were painted, there was usually only one portrait done in a lifetime, which meant that one’s descendants would know how you looked from just that one moment in time, so paintings were done when you reached an age of appropriate cultural status (middle-aged or beyond). Children were almost only painted in memoriam.

Antoinette Corwith Dangler hired Lydia Field Emmet to paint her portrait in 1906.

Paintings were serious affairs, and the subject of the portrait was depicted in his or her best clothing, posed and seated (most of the time) and with a limited background, to avoid distracting from the subject, who was paying for this privilege of being immortalized. One question people ask is why the subject didn’t smile in paintings from earlier eras? Might it have been issues with their teeth? Unlikely, as painters could and did correct for all sorts of cosmetic concerns. What is more likely is that one didn’t appear serious if one was smiling. These portraits were, after all, a statement of status.

The History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff is displaying an array of portraits across more than 150 years. The Illuminating Portraits exhibition, which opened on May 15, shows how portraits have changed over time, both in style and in subject.

For local families, the selection of commissioned works brought renowned portrait artists into their homes. Lydia Field Emmet was hired by Antoinette Corwith Dangler to paint her portrait in 1906. Emmet was, at that point in her career, a well-known artist, sought after by members of the East Coast elite, as well as Chicagoans like Dangler. Her career had taken her to Paris to study at the Académie Julian.  Returning to New York, she studied under several notable painters, including William Merrit Chase, who appointed her as an instructor at the Shinnecock Summer School of Art on Long Island.

Illuminating Portraits runs until Aug. 15. The earliest portraits on display are of Henry Farwell and Nancy Jackson Farwell, who undertook a 750-mile journey in 1838 by covered wagon from Steuben County, New York, to Ogle County in western Illinois, where they resided in a log cabin of 14 square feet. Their portraits show an austerely dressed, taciturn couple, reminiscent of the spirit of those who took on this sort of journey.

Their sons John and Charles Farwell came to the rapidly growing city of Chicago to make their way in the world. Both worked their way to the top -- John as head of one of the nation’s most profitable wholesale dry goods firms, Charles in the realm of politics, serving Illinois as U.S. Senator.

Having created a legacy in Lake Forest, John and Charles Farwell brought their parents to their last rest here. They are buried in Lake Forest Cemetery, overlooking the town whose development they put into motion.

Families were not the only ones to commission paintings. During the Gilded Age (1865–1914), corporations began hanging portraits of the founders and leaders. Industrial titans seeking to solidify their status, legacy, and power were at the forefront of this movement, but it expanded by the 1920s to become a visible symbol of the longevity of a company to visitors of their halls and boardrooms. The style remained the same as it had been for family portraiture—formal, seated, and well dressed. The museum has several corporate portraits of this nature. Three are on display: John Bryan, A. B. Dick, and A.B. Dick Jr.

Oil portraits eventually declined in popularity as photographic portraits became cheaper and easier to obtain. While early photographic portraits mimicked paintings, eventually the breeziness of a photo became the preferred style. Portrait artists also adapted beyond oil paintings, expanding into other media, such as pastels, watercolors, and conté crayon. The exhibition covers this evolution, which also expanded who was depicted. Children became a more common subject. Smiling in a portrait was now common.

Illuminating Portraits runs until Aug. 15 and is generously sponsored by the Dick Family Foundation and the North Shore Daughters of the American Revolution. The museum is open to the public Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 p.m.-4 p.m.