Last Thursday, I traveled on the Air Wisconsin commuter from Sioux
Falls Joe Foss Field to "Butch" O'Hare International for a
planned weekend with Jackie K., husband Jay, Will, Sara, and Aaron. If you
are the least bit curious about World War II Flying Aces, check out the connection between, Foss and O'Hare.
Both are Medal of Honor recipients though Foss was an American original. Joe wasn’t
Teddy Roosevelt but does own one of the more public, diverse, and
accomplished biographies of the twentieth century.
My literally winter holiday to the Windy City was planned with free
time on Friday to attack the Chicago Art Institute’s self-proclaimed top ten
must see works. Surprisingly the top ten got side railed by a qunikydink of the
federal government shutdown.
Two weeks prior to my holiday, my art mentor, Dr. Edward Welch suggested
we investigate the portraiture of George Healy. Suggesting Healy resulted from seeing
in the news, Healy’s well-known Lincoln portrait gazing over President Trump
and the fast food feast he was serving to the National Champion Clemson Tiger
football team on their White House visit.
George Healy (1813 – 1894) was a native Bostonian. At the age of eighteen
he became a portrait artist. His art expressed his interest in human beings and
“their” story whether they were beggars or kings. As a youth Healy was inspired
by Marquis de-Lafayette whom he saw as a young child at the laying of the
cornerstone for the Bunker Hill Monument on the 50th Anniversary of
the Revolutionary War in 1825. In 1836 Healy travelled to Europe to study and work.
After sixteen years he returned to America settling in Chicago.
A by-product of our study of George P. A. Healy was my discovery
that the largest collection of Healy’s portraits lives at the Newberry Library
in Chicago. The Newberry Library, a privately funded public access library
hosts over forty Healy portraits including a similar arm chair portrait of
Honest Abe, like the one at the White House. The Newberry Library is nestled on
Chicago’s Gold Coast just west of Michigan Avenue.
The primary endowment of the library was from the estate of Walter
Loomis Newberry. Walter became a Chicago resident in 1833, the year the town
was organized. Newberry was a business partner of Lewis Cass (Secretary of War
in the Andrew Jackson administration) and William Waldorf Astor (son of John
Jacob Astor). The partnership were early investors in real estate in Chicago,
Milwaukee, and Green Bay. Newberry was the first President of the Galena and
Chicago Union Railroad, the first railroad in Chicago. The library was established
as a research library. At the time of Newberry’s death Chicago already had a
well-established public lending library.
Any adult over the age of fourteen can obtain a library card by
application and showing photo identification. The library card admits you to
the reading rooms and research materials.
The library is stately and the furnishings, lighting, and quiet inspire
study. The staff were helpful and extremely knowledgeable. To compliment my study
of the artwork, I requested the biography of George Peter Alexander Healy,
written by Marie De Mare, Healy’s granddaughter. The title “G.P.A. Healy,
American Artist” was published in 1954. The introduction was penned by Eleanor
Roosevelt.
The grand first floor includes, a welcome center (registration),
coffee area, book shop, security checkpoints, and exhibit space. In the exhibit
space are a set of display fixtures designated “From the Stacks” which contain
diverse selections from the permanent collection. These exhibits are rotated
frequently. There is a larger space consisting of three galleries for special
exhibits that the library produces. Currently
on display was “Melville Finding America at Sea.”
Topically Newberry’s collection includes, Medieval, Renaissance
and Early Modern Studies; Maps, Travel and Exploration; Modern Manuscripts and
Archives; Chicago and the Midwest; American Indian and Indigenous Studies;
American History and Culture; Genealogy and Local History; History of the Book;
Religion; Postcards; Performing Arts.
Lining the walls of the reading rooms and bookcases are various
paintings, maps, and other presentations of cultural or historical nature. None
of the works are presented in any way that draws special attention to them.
Among the works on the three floors of reading rooms and offices are many of
the Healy’s. The majority of the Healy’s were a gift to the library by the artist.
George Healy painted many famous people of his day including every
President from John Quincy Adams to Ulysses S. Grant. Noted among the several Healy’s
on display were wonderful portraits of Franz Litz, Walter Newberry, Otto Van
Bismarck, Chester A. Arthur, and William Tecumseh Sherman among others. The two
significant paintings of Lincoln and U. S. Grant were in an almost out of the
way room near the end of the third-floor reading room above some bookcases.
The Lincoln portrait at the Newberry Library appears extremely
similar to the White House painting though the White House painting is larger. Lincoln
only sat for an hour for Healy one time about six months before he was assassinated.
Healy completed the painting from his sketches as he did subsequent portraits
of Lincoln.
Healy had always wanted to do a historical painting and he decided
that his historical depiction would be the War Council of President Lincoln and
his Generals, U. S. Grant, William T, Sherman, and Admiral David Dixon Porter on
the steamship River Queen at City Point, Virginia about two weeks before the
end of the Civil War. That meeting was the only time Lincoln met together with
both Grant and Sherman. This famous painting is known as “The Peacemakers.”
Today the painting hangs at the Defense Department at the Pentagon.
All of Healy’s portraits of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Porter
served as studies for “The Peacemakers.” When Healy conceived the idea of the "The Peacemakers," he had to arrange for a special sitting with Porter, whom he had
not previously painted.
In 1869 Congress commissioned a painting of Lincoln for the White
House. Healy sent his Lincoln portrait for selection, but President Grant
turned it down. The Healy Lincoln was then purchased by Lincoln’s son, Robert
Todd Lincoln, whose widow bequeathed it to their daughter who later gave it to
the White House. The White House received it in 1939.
On a bitter zero- degree day by the Lakeshore in Chicago I found
refuge at The Newberry Library. It was a fun little discovery and I had a great
time.
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