WILLIAM J. WEAVER (BRITISH/AMERICAN, C.1759-1817), ATTRIBUTED, PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, oil on poplar panel, finely executed bust-length profile view of Hamilton in Continental Army uniform. Housed in a period molded giltwood frame with later liner matte. 1794-1806. 9 1/4" x 7 3/8" object, 12" x 10 1/4" OA.
Slight warp to panel, minor scattered surface losses and areas of inpainting. Wear and losses to frame.
Literature: See Schweizer - "William J. Weaver and his 'Chymical and Mechanical' Portraits of Alexander Hamilton", American Art Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1/2 (1999), pp. 82-101 for an in-depth discussion of Weaver and this group of Hamilton portraits.
Provenance: Property from a Frederick Co., MD estate.
Catalogue Note: Despite the importance of Alexander Hamilton in the early period of our nation's history, there is a surprising scarcity of contemporaneous portraits depicting him, a conspicuous void in the visual record of the Revolutionary and Federal eras. One exception to this general observation, is the work of artist, William J. Weaver (c.1759-1817), a British-born itinerant portraitist who, from 1794 until his death in a poor house in 1817, traveled up and down the east coast, from Canada to Savannah, Georgia, in pursuit of commissions. Weaver, somewhat of a mysterious figure himself, appears to have created these portraits for wealthy friends and political allies of Hamilton in and around the time of the public figure's demise as a result of his infamous 1804 duel with Aaron Burr. The first record of Weaver promoting his Hamilton portraits occurred in Charleston, South Carolina in 1806, when the artist advertised in the Charleston Courier, January 28, 1806, p. 2 that "friends of the late General Alexander Hamilton, residing in South Carolina" should visit his newly established studio, where he claimed to produce portraiture as fine as any other artist in America. Weaver's specific reference to Hamilton and his "friends" indicates that the painter was offering copies of the recently slain figure's likeness to a specific demographic, a segment of the population with pro-Federalist views akin to those so long espoused by Hamilton himself. In this light, it is interesting to note that Weaver features Hamilton in his military garb, highlighting the sitter's significant military accomplishments while clearly aligning him with a Revolutionary past. As scholar Paul D. Schweiser states in his groundbreaking article on Weaver and these portraits, Hamilton in military attire simply had more "commercial potential" than Hamilton in civilian clothing. The formula appears to have worked, based on the growing number of documented examples, all of which depict Hamilton in profile wearing a modified Continental Army uniform. Another reason for the general compositional uniformity present in the surviving examples involves the techniques the artist employed in executing these works. Weaver had been aligned with the Polygraphic Society in London, a group of artists who worked with copying devices, in this case principally a contraption called a polygraph, which allowed for the replication of certain features of existing artworks that could then be completed under the specific direction of an individual artist. Though no definitive evidence exists, it is likely that Weaver employed a similar device in the execution of his Hamilton portraits, allowing him to reproduce with a high degree of exactitude, copies of his original composition offered on display. With the recent discovery of the present example, the total number of documented Hamilton portraits by William J. Weaver now stands at eleven.
Unfortunately, it is not clear at the present time, to whom this portrait of Hamilton was originally presented, although typed notes by J. B. McMullen, Washington, D.C., dated July 22, 1941, which are included with the present lot, indicate that the portrait may have descended from the Agg (or possibly Blackford) family of New Jersey. Fresh to the market from an old Frederick Co., Maryland estate, the current example adds another facet to the scholarship on the subject, and represents a rare opportunity to acquire an important portrait of an early American icon.

Slight warp to panel, minor scattered surface losses and areas of inpainting. Wear and losses to frame.