Flagg was the older brother of Jared Flagg. Montague and Charles Noël Flagg were his nephews. The successful launching of his own career owed much to the fact that he himself was the nephew of Washington Allston. George and Jared's father, a doctor originally from Newport, Rhode Island, had married Allston's widowed mother in South Carolina, where he had served during the Revolutionary War. These family roots and ties in New England and in South Carolina determined much of George Flagg's career, as they did Allston's.
Flagg's extraordinarily early demonstration of a talent and compulsion for drawing were all his own, however. He was eight years old when his family moved to South Carolina from New Haven, and it was at about this time that he began demonstrating his strong artistic tendencies. Although his parents and grandmother initially discouraged him, the portrait he painted of Bishop John England met with such admiration that they arranged to have him to study with the itinerant portraitist James Bowman, who was then in Charleston. In 1831, when Bowman went to Boston, the sixteen-year-old Flagg was allowed to accompany him so that he might come under the guidance of Allston. He studied with Allston for three years but also set up his own studio in Boston. He was represented in the annual exhibitions of the Boston Athenaeum in 1831, 1832, and 1833. In the latter year he moved to New Haven, where his family was again living. There he continued working as a portraitist and, as might be expected of an Allston protégé, as a painter of ideal subjects.
He first exhibited in an Academy annual in 1834; the subjects of his three submissions clearly identified his ambitions to history painting: Murder of the Princes in the Tower, Falstaff Playing King, and Portrait of a Lady Sleeping (all New-York Historical Society). These works immediately attracted the attention of New York's most generous and enlightened patron of the time, Luman Reed. He purchased the three works from the Academy exhibition and arranged for and subsidized Flagg's departure for study in Europe. He was in England, France, and Italy for about nine months in 1834-35-probably the usual period of a "season," fall to spring. In return for Reed's support, Flagg gave him all his ideal-subject pictures; he retained income from portrait commissions. Consequently, Reed's collection, which was on public view until his death in 1836 (and eventually passed to the New-York Historical Society), contained a disproportionately high number of Flagg's youthful works.
After his return from Europe, Flagg seems to have moved about a good deal. He was in Charleston, probably for the winter of 1837-38, and in Boston in 1839. There he did a cabinet portrait of Allston while Allston sat for Shobal Clevenger for a bust. Flagg's fourth appearance in an Academy annual was with a portrait sent from Boston in 1840. Later in 1840 he was again in Charleston painting portraits, but for most of that decade he worked in either New Haven or New York. He was represented in the Academy annuals of 1842 and 1843, both years giving his address as New Haven. He was elected to honorary membership in 1843 but in the category of an amateur, as distinct from professional artist. At the Academy annual meeting convened shortly after the opening of the 1844 exhibition, in which Flagg was again showing, he was made an honorary professional-quite likely a correction of the previous year's formal action.
Flagg gave a New York address for the annual catalogue in 1844, as he did when he participated in the annuals of 1846, 1850, and 1851. Whether he was actually living in New York before 1851, when he was made an Academician-residency then being a requirement for regular membership-is not known. It is interesting to note, however, that of the thirty-two paintings he had shown at the Academy up to that time, only four had been portraits. All the others were fancy pictures, scenes from literature, or ideal subjects. In the 1851 exhibition he showed only portraits-six of them. Where the Academy would be expected to reward efforts to practice the "higher" class of art, history painting, it seems in this case to have demonstrated its approval of a colleague having given up the avid pursuit.
In 1851, surely after the spring meeting of the Academy and his elevation to full membership, Flagg moved to Charleston. For the next eight years he enjoyed a highly successful career as a portraitist in that city, although he never entirely gave up the painting of ideal subjects. Eighteen of these were offered for auction in Charleston in the spring of 1859, when Flagg was preparing to go abroad. For an artist whose allegiances were decidedly divided between North and South, it was a good time to leave the country. By 1861 Flagg was in London, where he lived and worked until 1866. When he returned it was to New Haven. It was from there that he sent a subject picture to the Academy annual of 1866 and a miniature to the annual of 1867. His only subsequent appearances in Academy exhibitions were in the annuals of 1881, 1883, and 1885. During these years Flagg rarely exhibited anywhere, although he probably continued his practice as a portraitist. He lived in New Haven during most of the 1870s; city directories noted that he conducted an art school. He retired to Nantucket in 1879.
JPH
