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Henry Benbridge

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1730, Archibald Bulloch was the son of James Bulloch and Jean Stobo Bulloch. His father was a Presbyterian minister and merchant from Scotland and his maternal grandfather, Archibald Stobo, had been a founder of the Presbyterian Church in the colony. Educated and trained in law at Charleston, Bulloch moved to Georgia in 1758 and purchased a rice plantation on the Savannah River. In 1764 Bulloch wed Mary De Veaux, daughter of James De Veaux, another South Carolina native who had previously moved to Savannah.

Bulloch was an early and ardent leader of the "Liberty Party" in Savannah that promoted American independence from Great Britain. He entered the Georgia colonial legislature in 1768 and was speaker of the Commons House of Assembly in 1771-72. In 1774 he prepared resolutions denouncing the British closure of the port of Massachusetts and the next year represented Georgia in the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia.

On July 4, 1775, Bulloch became president of the Georgia provincial congress and was a consistent advocate of independence. When British governor James Wright abandoned his post in February 1776, Bulloch was elected president and commander-in-chief of the new revolutionary state. In the exercise of those offices he led a military expedition to oust a group of Tories and British soldiers from Tybee Island and confiscated for public use the property of recalcitrant Loyalists. He read the Declaration of Independence to Savannah residents on August 8, 1776, and, as president of Georgia, convened the state's constitutional convention in 1777. Archibald Bulloch died in the last days of February 1777.

The Archibald Bulloch Family is a formal conversation portrait, a common eighteenth century pictorial genre based on English and Italian styles. It portrays Archibald Bulloch in a military coat with epaulettes and sword. His wife holds their son Archibald Stobo Bulloch on her lap and their daughter Jane Bulloch is depicted at her side, presenting her apron filled with fruit. James Bulloch (1765-1806) stands at his father's left. The absence from the painting of their most famous son, William Bellinger Bulloch, indicates that it was painted prior to the son's birth in 1777. William Bellinger Bulloch (1777-1856) was mayor of Savannah in 1812, a member of the Georgia General Assembly and was a United States senator from Georgia in 1813.

Henry Benbridge (1743-1812) was among the first generation of American-born painters to receive artistic training in London and, more importantly, in Italy. This group brought back to America sophisticated neo-classical styles of portraiture and techniques that influenced American painting for many years. Born at Philadelphia on October 20, 1743, Benbridge received some early artistic training in that city. He probably knew the painters and studied the works of John Wollaston, Matthew Pratt, and the youthful Benjamin West. In 1764 Benbridge turned twenty-one years of age, received an inheritance from his deceased father's estate and traveled to Europe to continue his artistic training. He probably spent some time in London during 1765, visiting with fellow Pennsylvanian Benjamin West, but his objective was to live and work in Rome. He enrolled in Pompeo Batoni's academy, where he studied drawing from live models and antique statuary. He also learned Old Masters' painting techniques and the latest approved styles of painting drapery, backgrounds and postures.

Benbridge left Italy in 1769 and settled briefly in London where he began his artistic career. Throughout his life, his works demonstrated the strong influence of Benjamin West, Anton Raphael Mengs and his teacher Batoni. In 1769 he exhibited at the Free Society of Artists a full-length portrait of Pascal Paoli, a famous Corsican independence fighter. The young artist met the most famous Pennsylvanian of his era, Benjamin Franklin, in London and painted his portrait. He exhibited that painting and a portrait of Thomas Coombs at the Royal Academy in 1770.

Returning to Philadelphia later in 1770 Benbridge carried letters of recommendation from West and the illustrious Franklin who endorsed him as "our ingenious countryman" who, if he "did not from affection chuse to return and settle in Pennsylvania, he certainly might live extremely well in England by his profession." Franklin also recommended Benbridge for membership in the American Philosophical Society and joined that association of learned men, which Franklin had founded in 1743. Among the Society members in 1770 were the South Carolinians, Ralph Izard (1741-1804) and John Deas (1735-1790). Charleston and Philadelphia had strong economic, cultural and even kinship ties during the colonial era and it is possible that Izard, Deas or other South Carolinians may have encouraged Benbridge to seek his fortunes in Charleston.

In 1771 Benbridge moved to Charleston, South Carolina, to secure portrait commissions. Among all the cities in colonial America, Charleston probably had the closest economic and cultural ties to England. Wealthy South Carolina planters educated their sons in British universities and studied law at the Inns of Court and were frequent travelers on Grand Tour excursions to England, France and Italy. They emulated their English cousins by commissioning family portraits and conversation pieces from the foremost artists of the day and by purchasing fashionable furniture, decorative arts, silver, porcelain, and costly fabrics to decorate their Charleston townhouses and plantation homes.

In the few years before the American Revolution, Benbridge executed several paintings of the aristocratic Pinckney, Middleton and Simons families. Around 1775 he painted a series of individual and family portraits of prominent Savannah residents. Among them were the Wylly family (Mrs. Mary Bryan Wylly Morel and her children) and the Tannatt Family, which depicts nine members of an extended family network of Savannah merchants and local officials. The Wylly painting is in the Telfair Museum of Arts and Sciences, Savannah, and the Tannatt painting is in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. The Archibald Bulloch family painting is another of these Savannah works, and is one of the largest paintings Benbridge ever executed.

Benbridge resided in Charlestown during the American Revolution and some of his most important works are connected with South Carolina's struggle for independence. Some time after 1773 he changed the color of the military uniform that Charles Cotesworth Pinckney wore in his portrait from British red to Continental blue. Benbridge's portraits of Jacob Shubrick, Benjamin Huger and his history painting, The Death of Colonel Owen Roberts memorialized South Carolina patriots who lost their lives in battle.

In one of the worst defeats of the Revolution, Charleston was forced to surrender to British forces in May 1780. Five thousand Continental and militia soldiers were captured and the war in the South was nearly lost. The British took over the government of Charleston and used the city as a base of operations until December 1782. A year after the city's capture, the British suffered a series of defeats in battles in the upcountry and were seeking ways to prevent harm to captured British soldiers and Loyalists. By that time, both sides in the war had committed atrocities against prisoners and non-combatant civilians. On May 11, 1781, Colonel Nisbet Balfour, commandant of Charleston, ordered all prisoners on parole, including members of the colonial militia, to be confined to their homes. A week later he ordered 130 of those "Inveterate Enemies" of the Crown to be rounded up and imprisoned on two ships, the Torbay and Pack Horse, afloat in Charleston harbor. Henry Benbridge was among a group of 78 men who spent at least a few weeks aboard the Torbay. Among this group were Samuel Ash, Thomas Elliott, Peter Bonnetheau, and Thomas You, the silversmith. Why Benbridge was imprisoned is uncertain. No ready evidence exists that he was a member of the state troops or the militia, but he probably had a reputation as a supporter of independence. Benbridge's "affection" for America that Benjamin Franklin had observed in 1770 was likely undiminished. Some other Torbay and Pack Horse prisoners had no obvious military ties, and it is possible that Balfour had expanded his definition of "Inveterate Enemies" to include public sympathizers. Captain Stephen Moore and Major John Barnwell were the senior officers among the prisoners. They presented Balfour with a list of the prisoners' names and proclaimed their defiance and demanded to know why this action had been taken. In reply, Balfour informed the prisoners that they had been seized as "Hostages, for the good usage of all in the Loyal militia, who are or may be made Prisoners of War . . . ."

Some of the prisoners were exiled to British Saint Augustine by the end of the summer of 1781, and from there were transported to Philadelphia as part of a prisoner exchange. Other Torbay and Pack Horse prisoners were released in Charleston in June and some of those released, notably Peter Bonnetheau and Thomas You, took oaths of allegiance to the British.

Once again, uncertainty surrounds Benbridge's situation. He may have been among the prisoners exiled to Saint Augustine and then sent to Philadelphia or he and his family may have left Charleston as a result of another order of Balfour that families of paroled prisoners "quit the Town and province" by August 1, 1781. Whatever the impetus, Benbridge and his family were living in Philadelphia in 1782 and, because of his and his wife's family connections there, the exile was likely not very onerous. He also must have spent some part of 1783-83 (84?) in Norfolk, Virginia, where he painted portraits.

Benbridge returned to Charleston in 1784 and resumed his portrait-painting business, and secured good commissions from leading revolutionary families. It is possible that he painted the memorials to Huger, Shubrick and Owen Roberts. However, Benbridge did not restrict his clientele to Whigs. He also painted oil portraits and miniature portraits on ivory of former Loyalists. His portrait of James Lynah, M.D., a prominent colonial-era physician who sided with the British in Savannah, is an example of this ecumenical approach to his work. Among the Loyalists depicted in miniatures were Peter Bonnetheau, a former fellow prisoner on the Torbay, and Richard Moncrieff.

The Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association owns several of Benbridge's miniature portraits. His wife, Esther "Hetty" Sage of Philadelpia was also a miniature painter. The couple wed in 1770 and, upon settling in Charleston, she, too, enjoyed some artistic and commercial success.

In the last decade of his life Benbridge returned to his home in Philadelphia, where he died in 1812. AM

References:
Stewart, Robert G. Henry Benbridge (1743-1812): American Portrait Painter. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1971.

McInnis, Maurie D. and others. Henry Benbridge: Charleston Portrait Painter (1743-1812). Charleston, S.C.: Gibbes Museum of Art, 2000.

McInnis, Maurie D. and Angela D. Mack. In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.

Weekley, Carolyn J. "Henry Benbridge: Portraits in Small, from Norfolk." Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 4 (1978): 51-64.

Gibbes, Robert W. Documentary History of the American Revolution, 1764-1782, volume three. Columbia, S.C.: Banner Press, 1853; Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Company, 1972, 72-77.

McCrady, Edward. History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783. New York: Macmillan, 1902, 358-64.

Mack, Angela D. "Henry Benbridge, Charleston Portrait Painter." Magazine Antiques, November 2000.

American National Biography (2003 edition), s.v. "Archibald Bulloch," by R.F Saunders Jr.

Dictionary of Georgia Biography (2002 edition), s.v. "Archibald Bulloch (1730-1777)" by Jim Schmidt.

Biography courtesy of The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/charleston

The portrait painter and miniaturist Henry Benbridge was born in Philadelphia, where he was baptized on May 27, 1744, at Christ Church. After the death of his father in 1751, he was raised by his mother and her second husband, a wealthy Scottish merchant. Benbridge attended the Mathematical School of the Academy of Philadelphia until 1758, when he briefly studied with John Wollaston (c. 1710-c. 1767). He studied and copied prints after works by the old masters, and around 1765 went to Rome to attend the art academy that was then under the direction of Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779). Benbridge also received instruction from the portraitist Pompeo Battoni (1708-1787), who heavily influenced his style. Benbridge returned to Philadelphia in 1771 and became a member of the American Philosophical Society. He married Esther (Hetty) Sage, a miniaturist who had studied under the Peales, and around 1773 the couple settled in Charleston, South Carolina. Benbridge enjoyed a thriving practice painting portraits in the city until 1780, when it fell to the British during the Revolutionary War and he was forced to flee to St. Augustine, Florida. He briefly returned to Philadelphia, but was back in Charleston by 1784. Benbridge moved to Norfolk, Virginia, around 1800, where he briefly taught the painter Thomas Sully (1783-1872). He died in Philadelphia and was buried in Christ Church.

Biography courtesy of Schwarz Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/schwarzphila

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