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Christian Friedrich Mayr
Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1998 by Helene M. Kastinger Riley
Mayr's skill at portraiture and attention to detail appealed to the socially prominent families of Charleston. Therefore, the legacy of his stay is to a large extent a record of the city's foremost citizens in historical settings. In 1841, he painted a portrait of the Charleston volunteer fire department (Pl. V).(17) His likenesses of Brigadier General John Schnierle (private collection) and the latter's brother-in-law, Brigade Major John Siegling (Pl. II), are strikingly similar compositions. Both men wear their dress uniforms and both are shown with their horses. Schnierle's horse is held by a slave, while Siegling holds his own horse in the Charleston Citadel. In 1842 the Citadel was converted into a military school,(18) and the presence of a cadet approaching Siegling implies that the portrait was painted after that time. Both paintings have as their historical background an "intended insurrection" by the slave population of Charleston that was discovered in 1822.(19) As a result, a "competent force, to act as a municipal guard for the protection of the City of Charleston and its vicinity" was established in 1822 with "revenue to be derived from a tax on free negroes and their houses."(20) A decade later $200,000 was appropriated for arms, ammunition, and "for the support of the Citadel and Magazine guard."(21)
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Mayr's portrait of Jacob F. Mintzing (Pl. IV), one of several German-born mayors of Charleston, also has a historical connection. In the background is the splendid meeting hall of the German Friendly Society of which Mintzing was president from 1818 to 1819 and again from 1833 to 1841. This is the only known contemporary depiction of the hall, which was constructed by the master builders John Horlbeck Jr. (1771-1846) and his brother Henry (1776-1837) in 1801 and destroyed by fire in 1864.
The Charleston Courier announced on November 16, 1843, that Mayr was to leave for Havana. In January 1844 he advertised an exhibition of more than forty paintings in New Orleans, at the corner of Magazine and Grader Streets.(22) By 1845 he was back in New York City.
Many of Mayr's genre paintings afford an intimate glimpse of life in the United States. On a visit to White Sulphur Springs, in what is now West Virginia, he painted Kitchen Ball (Pl. VI), depicting a black wedding party celebrated by house servants in the kitchen.(23) As a European with an outsider's point of view, Mayr captured the condition of the black servants while at the same time giving them a dignified middle-class demeanor. The nuances of character, physical appearance, and dress evident in this painting distinguish it from the paternalistic portrayals of blacks common among American painters at the time.
In Reading the News (Pl. III), which Mayr submitted to the National Academy in 1849, he focuses on small-town America and its thirst for knowledge of the outside world. Even the attentive dog seems fascinated by what is being discussed.
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