MuseVision

Anyone traveling to Winston-Salem North Carolina should stop and experience MESDA. No. It’s not a Society for smarty-pants over-achievers. It’s a fine museum - The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Just a stones throw from Old Salem, the museum houses collections consisting of entire rooms, which were removed from important Southern houses in the time frame circa 1650-1750. The museum is remarkable in the depth and beauty of its collections and it also houses an important library. Every room is a masterpiece from its particular era and the walls are bedecked with lovely paintings. It was here that I met Henrietta Johnston for the first time. Well – met her works, course.

Henrietta Johnston painted wonderful portraits. All of them were oil pastels or crayons as they are often called. Crayons were a new medium during Henrietta’s time (c. 1674-1729) and during that era, the new medium was enjoying some of its most perfect realization. Jean Baptiste Chardin was working with it in France and John Singleton Copley used it in England. There were many others, too. It was also all the rage in Ireland.

Henrietta’s pastels are not standard pastel renderings, but are portraits with soul and style, grace and mystery. When I viewed one for the first time, I was struck by its softness and impressionistic quality. Of course, the images are not Impressionistic at all. They are exciting in similar ways, however. The details are suggested rather than specified. The portraits are refined by their warmth and expressiveness rather than by scrupulous attention to “photographic” exactitude – as if photographs looked ‘real” most of the time. Her colors are blended with an eye for overall effect, at once subtle and bold.

Henrietta took liberties, too. For example, most sets of the subject’s eyes, in her works, are larger than life. There is a temptation among some portrait artists to render the eyes overly large for the reason that the viewer will be attracted to the painting. When seen at an angle across a large room, the eyes may seem livelier, in this way. Unfortunately, when the viewer is directly in front of the painting, the eyes seem uncomfortably large and tend to overpower the whole image. Nonetheless, Henrietta’s works remain a complete delight and her subjects eyes have been called liquid and poignant.

The life of Henrietta Johnston could be made into one of those children’s books that inspire kids to be strong and resourceful. Her maiden name was Henrietta de Beaulieu. She was born in France to French Huguenot parents. Dispersed by the Edict of Nantes, Henrietta, her mother, and her sister migrated to London. The family joined the Anglican Church. Henrietta was trained in art and, although her exact teacher is not known, she must have been quite a serious student at a time when it was not easy for a woman to acquire such training.

By the time Henrietta was twenty, she married a Mr. Robert Dering. After the ceremony in Saint Martin in the Fields, the couple was off to Dublin, where the Dering family led the life of classic English Landlords on Irish soil. Apparently the Dering family was very prosperous and well-connected, and Henrietta produced many portraits of family and friends. A collection of these works surfaced in 1980. They had existed at Ireland’s Belvedere Castle for centuries. There were nine of them and they were all put up for auction sale. There is more about the sale of these works at the end of this article. The portraits caused a ripple in the art world of the time, as experts tried, mostly in vain, to supply the what, where and how.

Robert Dering died young, leaving Henrietta a widow, after approximately four years of marriage. There were also two daughters born to the couple. One was named Mary and there was another whose name did not come down in official records. The solidarity of the Dering family, coupled with Henrietta’s portrait sales, provided necessary support. In a few years, Henrietta met Gideon Johnston, a cleric in the Anglican Church, and a widower with two sons. They would be married in 1705 and her life would begin a dynamic new chapter.

The Johnstons, along with Henrietta’s two daughters and Gideon’s two sons, moved back to London, briefly, then they were off to Charles Town, (aka Charleston) South Carolina. Why would anyone move to Charleston in 1708? It was, at the time, the most remotely southern English colony in what was to become the United States. Hot summers, humidity, mosquitoes, tropical diseases, tropical storms, Indian uprisings, piracy and political divisiveness were all part of the landscape. Gideon had received an assignment from his Bishop to preside as rector at Saint Phillips Church, Charleston. As a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, he was specially qualified for the position, the Bishop must have thought. When the Johnstons arrived, they found the parish in turmoil. Great religious controversies raged among the people. These problems were to exact the major part of Gideon’s energies. From the beginning, Henrietta was busy creating portraits in the New World and is among America’s first portrait artists of the colonial period. Her works would be found in the homes of Charles Town and eventually the great houses of Charleston.

Henrietta made a trip to London in 1711-12. the ship on which she sailed was besieged by pirates off the Virginia coast. The people of Charleston and received news of the event and were greatly alarmed, but the pirates merely stole everything of value and then let the ship continue on its way. Thankfully, they were nice pirates. During this second London period, Henrietta made more portraits, a few of which have come down to us today.

Gideon, who struggled seriously all his life for the good of the Anglican Faith, died as the result of accidental drowning in 1716. Henrietta’s French qualities probably helped her survive. She had a simpatico with beauty and style, coupled with a skill for practical matters. She lived until 1729 and made an indelible mark on Charleston. 1725 found her in a lengthy stay in the city of New York. Several portraits exist from this period, too. You could say that Henrietta Johnston was one of the first New York artists.

Henrietta blended a life of service and struggle with a superior talent for art. If she had lived in a different time and been able to receive better material care, perhaps we would have seen a more varied collection of her work. We have no florals or landscapes that have yet surfaced. Nevertheless, portrait artists were a dime I dozen in the era before photography, but few of them achieved the distinctive style and loveliness, which is the hallmark of Henrietta Johnston’s work.

One last bit is for the residents of Savannah, Georgia. Of course, Georgia was not even founded until 1733 - upstarts by South Carolina standards. No matter. Fast forward to the 1980’s and we find James Arthur Williams (OK, are you with me?) traveling to Ireland and winning the purchase of all nine of Henrietta’s pastels pastels from Belvedere Castle. Williams brought them back to Savannah and treasured them greatly. It is said that he would display them and eagerly await people’s first responses. It seems Jim didn’t spend every midnight in the garden.

# posted by DreamSpinner @ 8/01/2006 04:17:00 PM