TitleSelf-Portrait
Artist
Daniel Huntington
(American, 1816 - 1906)
Date1891
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 36 1/8 × 29 in.
Framed: 40 3/4 × 32 3/4 × 3 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "D. Huntington/1891"
SubmissionANA diploma exchange presentation, March 13, 1893
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number602-P
Label TextIn 1893 Huntington exchanged this self-portrait for his original Associate presentation, a likeness painted nearly sixty years earlier by his close friend and brother-in-law, Cornelius Ver Bryck. It was natural for the Academy's venerable former president to wish to leave to posterity a mature self-image. Although he had executed it the year he retired from the presidency, Huntington probably had intended to keep the painting himself. This is suggested by the facts that he did not make the exchange until two years after painting the self-portrait and that he did not note the work in the account book in which he scrupulously recorded every commission during this period. The frank, informal characterization contrasts with the imposing self-portrait Huntington had painted in 1890 for the Century Association in which he wears formal attire and holds brushes and a palette. Here, by contrast, he presents himself as a student and lover of the art of the past rather than as a successful professional artist. Huntington's direct gaze invites the viewer to share his study of the engravings he holds, including one after Titian's Magdalen.Huntington was well known to be an admirer of Titian, and his own paintings pay homage to him. In 1856 he published an article entitled "Titian's Coloring," the first in a three-part series, Sketches of the Great Masters, written for the Crayon. "Titian's method was absolutely the beau ideal," the art historian G. W. Sheldon quoted Huntington as commenting in the 1870s. "Fullness of reality and individuality, and, at the same time, breadth and largeness of treatment. . . . Titian's [portraits] are always incomparable." In 1872 Huntington even honored the Italian master in a large history painting, "Titian Showing the Entombment to Charles V and Clement VII" (private collection). By introducing Titian's "Magdalen" into his own self-portrait, Huntington drew a direct connection between himself and his idol: Mary Magdalen figures in two of the three subjects he painted in common with Titian, "A Magdalen" (1986.212) and "Noli Me Tangere" (1858). In this late self-portrait Huntington thus memorializes his firm adherence to traditional artistic ideals and the great art of the past that characterized his long career.
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