painted in 1830 a thoroughly characteristic whole-length portrait in cabinet size of General Jackson. It was done for Colonel C. G. Childs of Philadelphia, who had it drawn on stone by the deaf and dumb artist, Albert Newsam. Jackson is represented full front, seated, with his hands clasped over his knees. In the same year, 1830, August Hervieu, a French artist, who came to this country in company with Mrs. Trollope, and later designed the illustrations for her "Domestic Manners of the Americans," in one of which he depicts Jackson on horseback, painted a whole-length, life-size military portrait of Jackson, which is now in the Redwood Library, Newport, Rhode Island. It is signed and dated, but is worthy of mention only because it exists.
Hoppner Meyer, a nephew of the celebrated John Hoppner, visited this country, and painted a miniature of Jackson wearing spectacles, which was presented to the President, New Year's Day, 1833. The next day General Jackson sent it to his daughter-in-law, writing, "Having rec'd the within as a New Year's gift, I enclose it to you, having nothing better which I can convey by mail." It now belongs to Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence, and has been engraved.
The distinguished landscape painter Asher Brown Durand, who was "easily first among American engravers and the peer of any of his European contemporaries," before he forsook the graver for the brush, went to Washington in the winter of 1835 to paint a portrait of General Jackson for Mr. Lauman Reed, an early and intelligent encourager of American art. Mr. Reed presented the portrait to the Museum at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Afterwards it was transferred to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. A replica is in the rooms of the New York Historical Society.
A miniature of General Jackson, signed "S. M. Charles, 1836," is owned by Colonel Wright Rives, U. S. A. Another was painted in 1839 by Miner K. Kellogg of Cincinnati, which now belongs to the artist's widow, Olive Logan. Yet another was painted at the Hermitage in 1842, by John W. Dodge of New York. This was skilfully engraved by M. I. Danforth, and published jointly by painter and engraver. The head from this miniature was used on the large black two-cent postage stamp issued in 1863. This stamp became the means of extensive swindling through the medium of newspaper advertisements offering "a fine steel engraving of Andrew Jackson for twenty-five cents."
America's first native-born sculptor, William Rush, exhibited a bust of Jackson in 1824 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. John Frazee also modeled Jackson, and busts of him by Hiram Powers are owned by Colonel Andrew Jackson and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are portraits of Jackson in the State Capitols at Nashville, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia. There is also a portrait in the possession of the Tennessee Historical Society. Most of these are whole-lengths, but it is impossible to ascertain anything authentic concerning them.
General Jackson had light blue eyes and sandy hair. His form and figure were easily caricatured, and some of the most distinguishing and life-like portraits of him are to be found in the caricatures which were produced in extraordinary numbers during the period of his presidential candidacies and administrations. An English traveler of the time says, "General Jackson is tall, bony, and thin, with an erect military bearing, and a head set with a considerable fierté upon his shoulders. A stranger would at once pronounce upon his profession, and his frame and features, voice and action, have a natural and most peculiar warlikeness. He has, not to speak disrespectfully, a game cock all over him. His face is unlike any other. Its prevailing expression is energy; but there is, so to speak, a lofty honorableness in its worn lines. His eye is of a dangerous fixedness, deep-set, and overhung by bushy gray eyebrows. His features long, with strong ridgy lines running through his cheeks. His forehead a good deal seamed, and his white hair stiff and wiry, brushed obstinately back."
There is but one original portrait from life of General Jackson's wife. It is a miniature painted in 1819 by Miss Anna C. Peale, and is reproduced herewith. The noted episode of Jackson's marriage to Rachel Donelson, the wife of Lewis Robarts, upon the false report of her being divorced, was the source of some of his most bitter quarrels with political opponents. Mrs. Jackson was born in North Carolina in the year of Jackson's own birth, and died at the Hermitage, December 22, 1828. Jackson's devotion to her and to her memory is matter of history. It is emphasized in the note to her miniature and also in the reminiscences of him by his granddaughter, published in this number of McClure's.
