Governors Academy - Milestone Yearbook (Byfield, MA)

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES - MR. NIR. DR. MR. MR. MR. REv. REV. MR. MR. MR. MR. HON. FRANK L. BOYOEN . . JOSEPH N. IDIIMMER, -YL'f7'l'fll71Y :XRTHUR EWELL . . . FREDERICK H. GOODNVIN . XYILLIAM .-X. LANG . . LEON M. LITTLE, Trmszzrer GLENN TILLI-:Y BIORSE . CARROLL PERRY . . JOHN PEIRCE . . JAMES DUNCAN PHILLIPS . FRED E. SMITH . . .. DAY'ID VYHEATLAND . . ALDEN P. WHITE, Pnxvidml I6 Deerfield, Mass. Rowley, Nlass. Worcester, Mass. New York, N. Y. Melrose, Mass. Boston, Mass. West Newbury, Mass Ipswich, Mass. New York, N. Y. Boston, Mass. Newburyport, Mass. Marblehead, Mass. Salem, Mass. I

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called Jeremyj was a much more brilliant figure. He was born in 1681, graduated from Harvard in 1699, and took the degree of doctor of philosophy at Utrecht in Holland. He went to England, took up law, and served for many years as agent for the colony in London. There his intellectual brilliance brought him a great reputa- tion as a wit. Unfortunately he allied himselfpolitically with Viscount Bolingbroke, and his political prospects came to an abrupt end with the accession of George I to the throne. He outshone his elder brother in ability, but was much his inferior in character. He died in 1739, never having fulfilled the extraordinary promise of his youth. Portraits of the two brothers, William and Jeremy, Jr., were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller while the two young men were together in London, before VVilliam's return to Massachusetts to become Lieutenant-Governor in 1716. Their father, Jeremiah, Sr., besides being a first rate silversmith, is now known to have also painted portraits. It is rather curious that none of his contemporaries mention this side of his career, but he and they presumably regarded painting as a pastime, and not as a serious or remunerative employment like his work as silver- smith or in civic affairs. He is not known to have ever visited England, and probably he taught himself how to paint. He was the earliest of our native-born Massa- chusetts artists. Like all the other minor artists of the English tradition at that period he tried to imitate the fashionable Knelleris style, with which he was doubt- less familiar from engravings. The portraits which he painted ofhimselfand his wife, and of his brother-and-sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. John Coney, are very creditable pictures. Fortunatelyhe painted inscriptions on the back of these portraits in lettering much like his handwriting, by which we are able to identify them as his work. In ad- dition to these four pictures a number of others - perhaps six or eight - have been more or less certainly identified as by him, from their resemblance to his known work. At this point one naturally asks whether he might not have been the artist who painted the pictures of Governor William Dummer and his wife Katherine, one of the daughters of Governor Joseph Dudley, now owned by the Academy and hanging in the headmaster's house. Unfortunately we have as yet no definite evidence to prove that he did so. This second portrait of William Dummer shows him consider- ably older than does the portrait painted by Kneller in London, yet not too old to have been painted after YVilliam's return from London before his father's death. One would like to think that the father painted the son, and there is nothing im- possible in the supposition, except that the picture is a good deal more ambitious,- or.pretentious,-than anything else we know old Jeremiah Dummer to have done. But if he did paint his son's picture did he also paint his daughter-in-law, Katherine Dummer? That picture shows much less skill, and appears to be the work of another hand. Yet it is very much like those of her two sisters, and of her sister- in-law Mrs. Paul Dudley, and, in view of the family connection with Governor Joseph Dudley, one can easily imagine that Jeremiah Dummer, in his old age, might have been engaged to paint portraits of several of the family, especially as no other artist capable of doing as good work is known to have been in Boston at that time. It is a pleasing fancy upon which to exercise the imagination, but there, for the present, we must leave the question, until further research gives us more definite information. But we do know enough about William Dummer's father to hold him in high respect as a man, as a craftsman in silver, and as the first of our native-born Massachusetts painters. sift-,qw -130 . 15

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