TitleSeth Wells Cheney
Artist
Jared Bradley Flagg
(American, 1820 - 1899)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 10 × 8 in.
Framed: 13 1/2 × 11 3/4 × 1 5/8 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1485-P
Label TextThe acceptance of Jared Flagg's presentation to secure his election to Academician is not specifically recorded in Academy minutes. But in the 1852 inventory of the Academy's collection, it is noted as a painting entitled Measure for Measure (also known as Angelo and Isabella), a work he had shown in the annual exhibition of 1849 and probably presented to the Academy shortly after that exhibition closed. The painting was no longer in the collection in 1911, when a listing was next published; however, a portrait of Seth Cheney by Jared Flagg was included in that publication. It is not known when and how this work entered the collection. The Academy also holds a portrait of Cheney by Henry Peters Gray, a work more likely to have been the one accepted on May 7, 1849, as Cheney's Associate diploma presentation. It is possible, however, that Cheney submitted Flagg's small portrait to secure his election and that Gray's portrait was Gray's presentation on his election to Academician.The identification of this portrait is based on a pencil inscription on the canvas stretcher-no longer visible but recorded in the early 1950s-"Seth Cheney from life by Jared B. Flagg." In style it bears a reasonable resemblance to Flagg's work of about 1850, and the visage appears to be the same as that in Gray's portrait of Cheney.
Cheney and his brother John spent much of 1848 and 1849 executing the engravings after paintings by Washington Allston that constituted the memorial volume Outlines and Sketches, by Washington Allston, published in 1850. It is probable that Flagg would have had contact with the popular and highly regarded younger Cheney in relation to this project.
George Whiting Flagg
n.d.
