The most commonly reproduced portraits of Alexander Hamilton are two-dimensional paintings, but there are a number of sculptures as well. (I’ve heard that there are more statues of Hamilton in New York City than any other individual; I believe it, though I can’t prove it - that’s a challenge for someone else.)
The one, above, is unusual because it’s more of a sketch of only his face made in plaster, and yet it captures the energy that so marked Hamilton. It’s also something of a second-hand likeness. The artist, John Henri Isaac Browere (1790-1834), was still a boy when Hamilton died in 1804. Browere never met Hamilton, let alone had him sit for a portrait.
But Browere’s teacher did. Archibald Robertson (1765-1835) was born in Scotland, and studied in London with the celebrated painters Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West. He emigrated to New York in the early 1790s, and became not only successful artistically as a painter of miniatures, but also socially, traveling in the best circles of Federalist New York City society. He knew Alexander Hamilton so well that he named his second son in Hamilton’s honor.
Around this time he painted a miniature portrait of Hamilton that is now lost; it was engraved, left, in 1834 by J.F.E. Prud’homme for the weighty collective biography National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans. However, after Hamilton’s death, Robertson made a second version of the miniature portrait that featured a 3/4 view of Hamilton, surrounded by law books, pamphlets, and scrolls to represent his various achievements. As a nod to his military career, his uniform hat, sword, and Cincinnati medal are (somewhat incongruously) on the shelf behind him. This version was engraved and sold as a popular, posthumous print of Hamilton, right, by William Rollinson.
Both these Robertson-inspired portraits show Hamilton as steely-eyed and determined, almost fierce. It’s a much different impression of Hamilton than the more familiar portraits by Charles Willson Peale and John Trumbull. Not surprisingly, these are the portraits that are often used to illustrate articles or biographies that stress Hamilton’s shrewdness as a financial genius, or as a statesman who could play the political game for high stakes - because that’s exactly how he looks here.
The original miniature by Robertson and perhaps the engravings based upon it were the inspiration for Browere’s plaster sculpture, above, made around 1816-1817, about the time Browere was studying with Robertson in New York City. Browere became famous for his life and death masks of famous 19thc individuals. Whether he made the study of Hamilton for his own artistic education, or simply because he admired the man and regretted that he hadn’t met him isn’t known, but the portrait that remains is strikingly evocative. I can’t help wonder, too, if Hamilton’s widow Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton ever saw it, and what her reactions might have been.
Above: Alexander Hamilton by John Henri Isaac Browere, 1816-1817, Fenimore Art Museum.
Left: Alexander Hamilton, engraving by J.F.E. Prud’homme after an original by Archibald Robertson, for the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans by James Herring and James Barton Longacre, 1834.
Right: Alexander Hamilton, engraving by William Rollinson after an original by Archibald Robertson, 1804, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Read more about Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton in my historical novel I, Eliza Hamilton; order here. My latest historical novel, The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr, is also now available everywhere. Order here.