William R. Hamilton’s Alexander Masterton and His Wife and Children is a charming and rare example of the conversation piece in early American art. Most fully developed in 18th-century Britain, the conversation piece was a specific type of group portrait that usually depicted a family involved in some everyday activity. The Museum’s conversation piece is unusual for its large scale and the incorporation of landscape and genre painting into portraiture. Its presence in the 19 th-century American art gallery adds a new dimension to the Museum’s collection. When the Scottish-born William Hamilton arrived in this country in the early 1830s, he brought with him this tradition and used it to demonstrate his talent at the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design. His 1833 exhibits included an elaborate group portrait of the James Wotherspoon family; so impressive was the painting that Hamilton was elected an Associate member of the esteemed institution – a great honor for someone new to the New York art scene. The dearth of conversation pieces in American art is surprising since such family portraits reflected the mores of the rising middle class. The majority of the country’s artists until Hamilton ’s era created modest bus-and half-length depictions of single figures. Due to the expense full-length portraits were primarily the domain of public, commemorative commissions, while group portraits often appealed to private patrons, who were usually wealthy and prominent men. Alexander Masterton accumulated a fortune as one of the country’s major architect-builders, responsible for the construction of the Bank of the United States , the New York Customs House, and many other important public and private buildings in the Greek Revival style. His marble-quarrying firm was so successful that he could afford to buy a country home in Bronxville and to commission this elaborate portrait, two major status symbols of the period. Masterton may have actually brought Hamilton to this country, for he, like the artist and most of Hamilton ’s other sitters, was Scottish-born. Hamilton ’s group portraits were known for their outdoor locales and inclusion of picturesque detail. Prior to Hamilton ’s arrival, only Ralph Earl, working in late 18th-century Connecticut, repeatedly incorporated landscapes into his portraits. The setting of the Museum’s painting may have been Masterton’s Bronxville estate, for the portrait remained there with the family until the mid-1980s. Hamilton presented the Masterton family dressed in their Sunday best, enjoying simple country pleasures: the two youngest children remain under the protection of their parents, while the older sons fish, and the family dog takes a nap. The verdant green foliage, garland of flowers, and spacious forest glade all suggest a comfortable life of prosperity and leisure. Ilene Susan Fort. “Recent Acquisition.” At The Museum 31 (March 1993): 12.

The art of the early Federal period did not greatly differ from that of the late colonial era. Portraits dominated the small field of painting. Victories on land and at sea in the War of 1812 brought the fledgling democracy greater confidence and new national pride. By 1829, when Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency, the foundations for an independent culture were securely laid. The philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the mood of the country in 1837: “our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close.” The following decades would bring a swell of artistic creativity, focused on native themes that extolled the seemingly limitless bounty of the New World.
Portraiture, and to a lesser extent history painting, continued to occupy American artists, but increasing numbers turned to views of the local countryside and its inhabitants. Although the industrial revolution only began in the United States after the War of 1812, the following three decades witnessed economic changes, especially in the north, that significantly affected working conditions, family structure, and even religion. Paintings illustrated American virtues like ingenuity and industry as well as the pleasures of country life. The new taste for genre pictures—scenes of ordinary people involved in everyday activities—seemed ideally suited to the egalitarian attitude of the Jacksonian era.
This period also saw the rise of the country’s first truly national school of landscape painting, ultimately known as the Hudson River school. Its earliest, best-known exponent, Thomas Cole, sometimes painted romantic literary subjects in European settings, but his dramatic depictions of the American wilderness helped spur the popularity of American views. As the country developed, paintings of uninhabited wilderness were replaced by views of farms, towns, and factories, but American artists retained their sense of awe about the land.

Finding his position as portrait painter to a duke in Scotland limiting, William Hamilton moved to New York City in 1832. There he immediately impressed the art community and potential patrons with his skill in creating elaborate, multi-figured portrait compositions such as this one. Trained in London and Paris in the tradition of “grand manner” portraiture, Hamilton here created a tour de force, combining lifelike portraits with amusing anecdotal details, such as the dog sniffing the fish on the grass. The lush natural setting hints at the American enthusiasm for wilderness and also demonstrates Hamilton’s love of landscape painting. This “conversations piece,” as such group portraits in informal settings are called, depicts the entire Masterton family enjoying their Sunday leisure. Although the wealthy sitter had a country home in Bronxville, near New York City, the house in the background and the river setting are imaginary. Plain, Federal-style frames such as this one, with its decoration limited to a single large acanthus leaf in each corner, became popular early in the nineteenth century and continued to embody the common virtues promoted during the Jacksonian era. This frame, the original, also suited the Greek Revival-style buildings constructed in New York City by the sitter.