Charles Ethan Porter, African American Still Life Painter
Tags: Art, Art History, Black Art, History, Painting

American Gems: Small Artworks, Enduring Impact: Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1923)

By Glenn Tomlinson, William Randolph Hearst Curator of Education, Norton Museum of Art

This series features short essays on artworks in the American collection that visitors may have missed simply because of their intimate scale. Despite their size, these works and the artists who made them provide important insights into the expanding field of American art. It is our pleasure to explore these gems with you.

Charles Ethan Porter’s small painting, Roses, invites us to look as closely at a bouquet as if we were approaching to catch its scent. Set in a rotund ceramic jar atop a brown tablecloth and against a sepia background, the brilliant flower arrangement captures one’s gaze. At the right, white, pale yellow and pink roses appear at different stages of flowering. The yellow bud is relatively compact compared to the white rose’s petals that extend and curl back. Green tinted shadows upon this flower contrast with the warmer pink tones on the white blossom at the center of the composition. This blossom stands out against the deep green leaves behind, while projecting over the lip of the jar, casting a shadow on the ceramic surface. Three bright pink roses — as well as a fourth which has fallen to the table — draw our attention to the left. These flowers provide the most dramatic range of tones in the bouquet, from pale pink highlights to burgundy shadows as they turn away from the light. The bulbous profile of the bowl echoes the silhouette of the flower above and draws it to the rose on the tablecloth. Porter’s sensitivity to light even records this rose’s colorful reflection upon the glazed ceramic vessel.

Charles Ethan Porter (American, 1853–1920) Roses, circa 1881

Oil on canvas

Overall: 19 3/4 x 16 1/2in (50.2 x 41.9 cm) Gift, from the collection of Juan Rodriguez, 2014.100

As the preceding paragraph suggests, Porter takes us on a journey, allowing us to see the subject through his eyes by transcribing the nuances of light and shadow on complex natural forms through brushstrokes of rich pigment. The great care Porter took in describing this bouquet of roses suggests the delight he took in painting still lifes, the primary subjects of his artistic career.

When Roses was painted, circa 1881, Porter was a rising young artist. Born in the late 1840s, he grew up in poverty in rural Connecticut. His family endured real tragedy — he lost several brothers and sisters to illness and the Civil War before he reached adulthood. Determined to become an artist, Porter worked and saved to allow himself to study painting. In 1869 he became the first African American student admitted to the National Academy of Design in New York where he studied alongside Julian Alden Weir and Albert Pinkham Ryder. By 1878 he had established a studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and his patrons included Mark Twain; a surviving photograph of the author’s dining room shows one of Porter’s paintings upon the wall. The leading American landscape painter, Frederick Edwin Church, also purchased Porter’s work and praised his handling of color. A critic wrote in 1879 that Porter’s still lifes showed a “finesse and accuracy of touch that would do credit to the microscopic finish of the old Flemish masters.”

In 1881 Porter’s sale of 100 of his paintings financed a two-year trip to Paris, where he attended an art school frequented by many American artists abroad, the Académie Julian. He felt pressure to succeed, commenting in a letter to Twain that “…there are a goodly number of my Hartford friends and others who are anxious to see how the colored artist will make out.” More importantly, he said he was aware that “my success will only add to others who have already shown wherein they are capable the same as other men.” After returning from his trip abroad, Porter’s hard work seemed to have paid off; through the 1880s he painted some of his finest works.

Charles Ethan Porter, 1911, courtesy of Vernon Historical Society, Connecticut (Wikipedia)

By the late 1880s, Porter’s fortunes were beginning to change. While an economic downturn and evolving styles in art may have had an impact upon Porter’s career during the 1890s, it also seems clear that Porter’s works were overlooked due to racism. At first, he mounted a large exhibition in Hartford to raise money, but the effort failed. While little is known about his private life, stories survive of his struggles in New York City, where he was forced to try to sell his paintings door to door just to buy food. By 1897 he had returned to Rockville, his hometown in Connecticut. There he would continue to teach fellow artists and paint until 1914. Suffering from nephritis, he died in 1923. It would be another sixty years, a century after his initial success, before art historians and art galleries would re-examine the works of this talented American still life painter.

Glenn Tomlinson, William Randolph Hearst Curator of Education

More about Charles Ethan Poter below.