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Portraits
of a Young Hero:
Two Versions of Robert Field's
"Portrait of Lieutenant Provo William Parry Wallis"
by Barry Lord
Pages 1
| 2 | 3
Brighton's report that the portrait in Wallis' home represented
Sir Provo's father "when a young man" was patently wrong. The elder Wallis, Provo
Featherstone, had been
Chief Clerk to the Commissioner of the Naval Yard in Halifax. It is true
that a Provo Wallis is mentioned in Admiralty letters as being a master
shipwright in the Naval Yard in New York between 1776 and 1780; (9) but even
if one could prove that this Wallis was in fact Provo Featherstone, one
would be confronted with the fact that Field, undoubtedly the author
of the painting, was not in the United States until after the American
Revolution, from 1794 until 1808. There were other facts to militate
against the identification. The elder Wallis would not have been wearing
the uniform of a naval lieutenant. Nor would a portrait of the elder Wallis
by someone other than Field, painted some twenty years before that of his
son (which is dated 1813), have caused Dr Brighton to draw the close comparisons
he does. One possible explanation for Brighton's misinformation is that
Sir Provo William Parry Wallis, a knight-admiral and "grand old man" by
the time of his interview with Brighton, might have found it convenient
to say that the second portrait represented his father early in life, in
order to claim a more esteemed ancestry.
A second portrait of the younger Wallis (fig. 4) and what may well be a portrait of the
elder Wallis (fig. 5) have subsequently been discovered. In the summer of 1968, thanks to a Canada Council grant,
I was able to go to England in search of the missing "original." Although the quest was not immediately
successful, I eventually found two portraits in the possession of the Reverend
P. A. M. Edlin of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Both match the National Gallery
portrait in dimensions (30 x 25 in. [76.2 x 63.5 cm]), and in signature
and date (R. Field 1813). The present owner's grandfather, the
Reverend G. M. Norris, a nephew of Wallis, inherited them from his uncle.
He then bequeathed them to Reverend Edlin's uncle, the Reverend F. G. M.
Norris, who in turn willed them to his nephew. Throughout the years they
have been known as portraits of Sir Provo and his father. (10)
The Edlin portrait (fig. 4) is clearly the one from which both the wood-engraving
(fig. 2) and the New Brunswick Museum's painting (fig. 3) were made. The
inclination of the head, the youthfulness of the face, the shape
of the ear, the locks of hair on the forehead, the folds and disposition
of the shirt-front, the arrangement of buttons, and, most significantly,
the raised left arm - all have their source in this painting. The background
is remarkably similar in colouring to that in the National Gallery's portrait;
so too is the treatment of light - the shadow on the collar, the glare
along the fringes of the epaulette, and the highlights on the forehead
and nose (see figs. I and 4). Wallis, however, appears a younger, more
spirited hero - his hair whipped by the wind, his body in motion. The portrait
lacks the gravity and mature expression of the one in the National Gallery
(the chin and especially the muscles around the mouth are given less distinctive character). Perhaps the Edlin work was painted directly from life,
before the more official and somewhat more monumental portrait was painted.
On the other hand, it could have been done after the National Gallery's
portrait was completed, as a personal memento for the sitter.
Whatever their order of composition, these two versions are
undoubtedly the paintings Brighton compared so closely in the Admiral's
home shortly before 1892. The reason for their separation - and how the
National Gallery version came to appear in a sale in 1917, without correct
identification - we may never know for certain. Ottawa's painting may have
been sold directly from the estate; or it may very well have passed to
the Admiral's widow's family, whose descendants today remember the sale
of an important painting during the First World War, while its owner was
at the front in France. The owner's absence might explain how the Ottawa
painting came to be associated merely with the name on the box it was found in. Another descendant is said to have sold off a
ware-houseful
of paintings about 1920. (11)
The other painting in the Reverend Edlin's possession is a
portrait that also looks convincingly as if done by Field, a picture that does appear to represent Sir Provo's father, not "when a young man" but
as he might have looked in 1813 as Chief Clerk of the Halifax Naval Yard
(fig. 5). The background is a conventional light brown, brighter to either
side of the figure, and with a shadow in the lower left. The modelling,
the treatment of light falling on the facial features, the handling of
paint, and details such as the articulation of the ear - all confirm Field's
authorship at about this date. The painting is, in fact, closer to the
National Gallery's portrait in tone and spirit than to the Edlin version
with which it now hangs. The pose of the father, with his right arm sloping
down to the lower left corner of the picture, makes it a perfect pendant
for the Ottawa version of the son, whose left arm slopes to the lower right
corner. This pendant relationship might explain the more mature features
of the lieutenant in Ottawa' s version, painted to show the family resemblance
of the hero to his father. Perhaps the Ottawa version was adapted from
the Eldin painting later in 1813, to "match" the father's portrait.
All three paintings show Field at the height of his powers as a portrait-painter.
"Probably Field's best production in oil," Piers said of the National Gallery's
version of the lieutenant. (12) The two newly-discovered portraits may not
challenge this estimation, but they do enrich our appreciation of the artist
at this point in his career. Field's debt to Sir Joshua Reynolds, as Russell
Harper has observed, is evident in full-length portraits like that of Sir
George Prevost in Halifax; (13) but in his head-and-shoulder and half-length
portraits, and particularly in these three paintings, he suggests a
greater affinity with the painting of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Born in 1769,
Lawrence was precisely of Field's generation, and first came to public
attention with his portrait of Queen Charlotte done in 1790, the year when
Field was studying engraving at the Royal Academy Schools in London (14) Four
years later Field was to leave England never to return, so that the influences that he was exposed to during this brief
period before 1794
were definitive.
Of course Field was not Lawrence. His colour seldom has as
much spirit, and his work as a miniaturist, done along the American seaboard,
appears to have left him with a hand more meticulous and probing than adventurous.
But the commission to paint the portrait of a dashing young native-born
hero of the moment, and his proud father, demanded of him his best qualities
as a painter. Giving full rein to his romantic sensibility, he posed
his officer before a turbulent sky, hair fashionably tousled; colour
and light are imaginatively treated, with a sense of the drama of the occasion.
The father reflects the admired traits of the son, with the added sobriety
that came with age and with his administrative position. In all three pictures Field manages to imbue the sober realism
demanded of the portrait-painter
in North America with an enlivening touch of the freshness of the early
romantic spirit. We sense the gracious restraint of their lives, their
ideal of courage, and the confidence of these early Haligonians in their
ability to defend and maintain their naval city. He also gives us an admirable record of one of Canada's first naval
heroes.
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