TitleUnidentified man (Frederick Agate?)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on panel
DimensionsFramed: 17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.
Storage: 17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1327-P
Label TextFounders and members elected before 1839 were not required to present portraits of themselves to the Academy. An effort clearly was made, however, to secure portraits of early members. A few had been acquired by 1843 when the Academy collection was first published, and many more by its second publication in 1852, including a self-portrait by Frederick Agate. That 1852 record of the painting includes the unusual annotation "(small)," indicating it was substantially different from the thirty by twenty-five inch stipulated dimensions of Associate diploma portraits. Agate, a principle founder, who was only forty years old at his death in 1844, was especially popular with his colleagues, and his early death was much lamented. It is reasonable to believe that in the circumstances, any portrait, no matter how ephemeral, would have been sought out for the collection. The dimensions of this unidentified work; the youth of the subject; his costume dating it to the 1830s or early 1840s; and the directness of gaze, characteristic of a self-portrait, suggest the possibility of identifying it as the Agate self-portrait.
