Henry Benbridge Charleston portrait painter

Anative of Philadelphia, Henry Benbridge (P1. I) settled in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1772 and remained there for nearly twenty years. His only known comments about the society in his adopted city are contained in a letter dated February 21, 1773, to his half-sister Elizabeth Gordon (b. 1752) in Philadelphia:

Every kind of news here is very dull, the only thing attended to is dress & dissipation, & if I come in for [a] share of their superfluous Cash, I have no right to find fault with them, as it turns out to my advantage. [1]

Banbridge's disdainful opinion of Charleston society is echoed in the Charleston South-Carolina Gazette of March 1, 1773:

If we observe the Behavior of the polite Part of this Country, we shall see, that their whole Lives are one continued Race; in which everyone is endeavouring to distance all behind him, and to overtake or pass by, all before him; everyone is flying from his Inferiors in pursuit of his Superiors, who fly from him with equal Alacrity....Between Vanity and Fashion, the Species is utterly destroyed. [2]

There is no doubt that eighteenth-century Charleston was a fluid society in which achievement was measured by material success. It was the fourth largest city in the colonies with a per capita wealth many times that in other colonial cities. The pre-Revolutionary boom in Charleston was fueled by rice, indigo, and trade in a wide range of commodities.

ANTIQUES

This prosperity, in turn, was supported by slave labor. [3] Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775) of Boston, visiting Charleston in 1773, exclaimed:

In grandeur, splendour of buildings, decorations, equipages, numbers, commerce, shipping indeed in almost every thing, it far surpasses all I ever saw or expected to see in America. [4]

Charlestonians, more than residents of any other colony went to London for education, business, or pleasure. [5] Thus it is not surprising that English and European artistic trends prevailed in the city, most notably in portraiture. The admired artists were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Johann Zoffany, William Keable, Nathaniel Hone, George Romney, Benjamin West, and John Singleton copley. [6]

Benbridge's father, James, died in 1751, when Henry was eight. However, he inherited money and property from him when he reached his majority in 1764, providing him with the where-withal to become one of the earliest native-born artists to continue his studies abroad. [7]

Following in the footsteps of Benjamin West, the first American painter to study in Italy, Benbridge was in Rome from 1765 to 1769, when archaeological finds had generated intense enthusiasm for classical antiquity. Through his association with Christopher Hewetson (1737-1798), a very successful Irish sculptor, Benbridge was in contact with some of the most important artists and antiquarians of the day. His only surviving sketchbook, dating from the latter half of the 1760s, reveals his own interest in antiquity, and includes sketches of ancient gems, cameos, vases, bronzes, statuary and architecture (see Fig. 1). [8] Benbridge had access to the work of Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), a leading contemporary artist, and he enrolled in the academy of Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), favorite of the British on the grand tour. [9]

Benbridge went from Rome to London in 1769 and immediately called or West, a relation by marriage, and or Benjamin Franklin. He had a letter of intro. duction to Franklin from his stepfather Thomas Gordon (1712-1772), a prosperous Scottish merchant in Philadelphia. He wrote that West received him "with a sort of brotherly Affection." [10] Benbridge used both connections to his advantage, and within a few months he exhibited two portraits at the Royal Academy one of them of Franklin (unlocated).

When Benbridge returned to Philadelphia in 1770 he carried flattering letters of introduction from Franklin to his wife, Deborah, and from West to Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), a lawyer writer, and satirist. To his wife, Franklin wrote:

This will be delivered to you by our ingenious countryman Mr. Benbridge, who has so greatly improved himself in Italy as a Portrait painter that the Connoisseurs in that Art here think few or none excel him. I hope he will meet with due encouragement in his own country and that we shall not lose him as we have lost Mr. West. For if Mr. Benbridge did not from affection chuse to return and settle in Pennsylvania, he certainly might live extremely well in England by his profession. [11]

West wrote to Hopkinson: "His [Benbridge's] merit in the art must procure him great incouragement and much asteem. I deare say it will give you great pleasure to have an ingenous artist residing amongst you.

These letters would have opened many doors for Benbridge, so it is surprising that only one signed and dated portrait is known from the two years between his return to Philadelphia and his removal to Charleston. On the other hand, in 1771 Benbridge was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, [13] which Franklin had founded in 1743, and of which West was also a member.