TitleCanonicus and the Governor of Plymouth
Date1841
MediumOil on cardboard
DimensionsUnframed: 4 1/2 × 6 1/2 in.
SignedSigned lower right: "A. D. O. Browere / 1841"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1986.3
Label TextOn August 31, 1840 the Academy's Council approved the principle of, and specific rules governing, a competition for historical painting, "In order to promote more effectivally [sic] the advancement of the higher branches of the Art of Painting." In the following month Robert Launitz and James Whitehorne were appointed the committee to decide on the subject of the competition, and within a week reported:Your Committee have given the business entrusted to them their careful consideration, and in coming to their conclusions, they have been guided by the following principles. As the subject was to be from American History, it should have reference to transactions between the "first Lords of the Soil" and its present rulers, possessing not only a higher interest, but giving also to artists a wider scope to exhibit their knowledge of the beauties of the human form, and aquaintance with manners, customs, character and history of the aboriginies of their native land the grandeur of whose original wild and lofty scenery should not be excluded. Your committee is also of opinion that the subject should be one of a matter of fact history (and not of fiction) representing both races in their predominant character. The hate of the Indian for the white man and the conscious strength and superiority[,] with the advantage of civilization of the latter[,] relying on these for his protection[,] and the maintaining and enlarging of his foothold in the country[. N]o subject has presented itself to your committee in which these could be more interestingly Exhibited than in the following from Thatcher's lives of the Indians Vol. lst Page 181--Harper's family Library Edition--
Canonicus chief of the Naragansett tribe sent a herald to Plymouth who left a bundle of arrows enclosed in a rattlesnake skin--the customary challenge to war. The governor dispatched a messenger in return, leaving the same skin stuffed with gunpowder and bullets, assuring the chieftan that if he had shipping instead of troubling him to come as far as Plymouth to gratify his wish for fighting he would have sought him in his own country; and furthermore that whenever he did come, he would find that the English were ready for him. This resolute message had the desired effect and the Sachem's superstition confirmed it. Fearful of some mysterious injury he refused to touch the skin and would not suffer it to even remain in his house. It passed through several hands, and at length was returned to the colony unopened.
Your committee think that the above anecdote possesses an unlimited stock for the power of invention of an artist. It may be represented with only a few figures, while it allows for the introduction of hundreds. The preparation of war of the Red man: the barbing of arrows, the sharpening to Tomahawks, which is stayed by the appearance of the English messenger, again the anxious curiosity of the untutored son of the forest, the surprise and fear of the Sachem, the secret exultation of the messenger at seeing the effect he had produced. These and the contrast of the costume of the Indian and the English of the early part of the 17th century afford materials for a composition of interest.
It may be objected that this is a subject but little known. Your commitee would with deference reply that they deem it the business and duty of the historical painter to snatch from oblivion and transmit to posterity facts in history that have not already been recorded by other hands or made familiar to the mass of mankind.
Although the subject for the competition may have been peculiar to American history, the concept was hardly a novelty, and dates back to such historical compositions as Charles Le Brun's Alexander and the Wives of Darius and its theme of the triumph of civilization over the barbarian. The Indian became the perfect vehicle for such sentiments while allowed the artist to display his knowledge of the nude.
The competition was open to "All artists except Academicians of this or any other Academy" however, the response was not so eager as that statement anticipated. Only three artists submitted. The work of one--whose name went graciously unrecorded--was so poor it was immediately rejected, leaving the compositions of Browere and William Jay Bolton to be displayed in the Academy's annual exhibition of 1841. In June, two weeks before the close of the exhibition, as stipulated in the competition regulations, a special meeting of the Council was summoned for the purpose of awarding the premiums. By unanimous vote on the first ballot, Browere's painting, which is now unlocated, received the first premium of one hundred dollars, and Bolton's, the second of fifty dollars. Despite the Academy's desire to promote "higher art," it did not again offered a similar competition.
The rules of the competition required that the finished paintings be not greater than eight square feet, or less than seven square feet in size, suggesting canvases of roughly 30 by 36 inches, and that the "sketch of the painting receiving the premium shall be presented to become the property of the Academy." Thomas Cummings, writing his Annals over twenty years later, remembered William Bolton's painting as the superior work, and the recipient of the first premium. However, Academy minutes made at the time of the event, and the existence of this small sketch in the Academy's collection convincingly contradict him.
1902
