The papers of the portraitist and art theorist William Page and the Page family measure 11.06 linear feet and date from 1815 to 1947, bulk 1843-1892. In addition to the papers of William Page, the papers include documents related to Page's wife's career as a writer and records documenting their personal lives and the lives of their family members. Types of documents found include personal documents and artifacts, correspondence, essays, lectures, diaries, poems, notes and notebooks, financial records, legal records, published works, clippings, catalogs, photographs, and artwork.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of the painter William Page and the Page family measure 11.06 linear feet and date from 1815 to 1947, with the bulk of papers dating from 1843 to 1892. Papers contain records related to the life and career of William Page, president of the National Academy of Design from 1871 to 1873 and prominent portraitist and art theorist of his day. Also found are records related to his wife's career as a writer and records documenting their personal lives and the lives of their family members. Types of documents found include personal documents and artifacts, correspondence, essays, lectures, diaries, poems, notes and notebooks, financial records, legal records, published works, clippings, catalogs, photographs, and artwork.
Correspondence includes the personal and professional correspondence of William and Sophia Page, and their parents, siblings, and children. Significant correspondents include Thomas Hicks, Enoch Wood Perry, William Stark, Theodore Tilton, Lemuel Wilmarth, Wendell Phillips, William Walker Scranton, Francis G. Shaw; James Russell Lowell, Charles Frederick Briggs, George W. Curtis, Charlotte Cushman, Thomas K. Beecher, Mary Olmsted, and Bertha Olmsted.
Writings include the essays and lectures of William Page, as written by him and revised by Sophia Page in the late 1870s, as well as Sophia's writings as a columnist in Europe in the 1850s. Notes, notebooks, diaries, and poems are also found. Personal Business Records include business records related to the sale and exhibition of artwork as well as financial and legal documents. A small number of memoranda and documents related to Page's work at the National Academy of Design are also found. Printed Materials include exhibition catalogs, published works by William and Sophia Page, and clippings and articles about Page.
Photographs consist mainly of portraits, most of them mounted cabinet photographs or cartes-des-visites, some of which appear to have been used as studies for Page's painted portraits. Among those pictured are William Page, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher, Reuben Fenton, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, William R. O'Donovan, and William Lloyd Garrison. Many of the photographic portraits are unidentified. Artwork includes sketches, drawings, prints, and a small number of notes made by Page in the course of painting portraits.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 7 series. Glass plate negatives are housed separately and closed to researchers.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials and Artifacts, 1847-1917 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1815-1942 (Boxes 1-4, 9-10; 3.2 linear feet)
Series 3: Notes and Writings, 1839-1888, 1949 (Boxes 4-5, OV 10; 1.3 linear feet)
Series 4: Personal Business Records, 1848-1932 (Boxes 5 and 9; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Printed Materials, 1845-1938 (Boxes 5-7, 9, OV 11; 1.6 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographs, 1845-1947 (Boxes 7-9, OV 12, MGP 5-6; 1.4 linear feet)
Series 7: Artwork, 1856-1874 (Box 8, OV 13-16, rolled documents 17-19; 0.6 linear feet and 3 rolled documents)
Biographical Note:
The painter William Page was born in 1811 in Albany, NY. He attended public schools in New York City, and after working briefly in the law firm of Frederick de Peyster, was placed in the studio of the painter/engraver James Herring in 1825, where he received his first formal art training. He took classes at the National Academy of Design the year it was formed, in 1826, under Samuel F.B. Morse, and in 1827 he was awarded one of the National Academy's first annual student prizes.
Page joined the Presbyterian church and attended Phillips Academy and Amherst with the intention of becoming a minister, but his artistic ability won out, and by 1830 he was painting commissioned portraits in Albany, Rochester, and New York. He married Lavinia Twibill in 1833, and they had three daughters between 1834 and 1839. He joined the American Academy and served on its board of directors in 1835. He exhibited at the American Academy, the National Academy of Design, the Boston Athenaeum, and other venues throughout the 1830s. Favorable reviews brought steady portrait commissions, including John Quincy Adams and the New York governor William L. Marcy. He was made a full member of the National Academy in 1837.
In the 1840s, Page's reputation and maturity as a painter grew. His first wife left him around 1840, and in 1843 he married Sarah Dougherty. The couple moved to Albany, Boston, and back to New York seeking portrait commissions and patronage. He became friends with the poet James Russell Lowell and the writer and publisher Charles Frederick Briggs, two writers and editors who helped to promote his artwork in Boston and New York and published his theoretical writings. In 1844, Lowell dedicated his first published book of poetry to Page, and the following year, Briggs published a series of articles by Page in the Broadway Journal, entitled "The Art of the Use of Color in Imitation in Painting." The series described Page's arduous experiments with color and glazes, and his ideas about correspondences between spirituality and the natural world as expressed in art.
In 1850, Page traveled to Florence, Italy, where he painted several copies of the works of Titian in the galleries of the Uffizi and Pitti palaces, studying his use of color and further developing his own experimental techniques. He became friends with the sculptor Hiram Powers, who introduced him to the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Christian metaphysician whose ideas fueled Page's interest in the spiritual aspects of art. In 1852, Page moved to Rome, a city with an international artists' community and a strong market for art. Page found a loyal following in Rome's large circle of American ex-patriates, including the sculptors Thomas Crawford and Harriet Hosmer, the actress Charlotte Cushman, and the poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all of whom sat for portraits by Page.
In 1854, Page's second wife left him amidst public scandal, and he sank deep in debt to his bankers at Packenham and Hooker, an English firm that by 1856 had a lien on all the paintings in his studio. That same year Page met Sophia Stevens Hitchcock, an American widow traveling in Rome with Bertha Olmsted, Frederick Law Olmsted's sister. Hitchcock was from Barnet, Vermont and came to Europe after her first husband died in 1852 after only a year of marriage. She traveled to England and Paris, where she wrote regular columns on local customs and events for the New York Tribune that were published under the by-line "An American Woman in Paris." She and Page met in Rome in 1856, and in October 1857, after Page traveled back the United States to obtain a divorce from Sarah Dougherty, he and Sophia married.
The couple stayed in Rome until 1860. His wife's three brothers, all businessmen, helped to promote his artwork in Europe and America. Page's paintings of this period include several Venus subjects, one of which was championed by his most loyal patrons, who raised $3000 by subscription to buy the painting for the Boston Athenaeum. A later Venus painting was rejected from the Paris salon for indecency, a controversy that was later leveraged for publicity in a touring exhibition in the United States.
The Pages returned to the United States in 1860 and settled in Tottenville, New York. They had six children between 1858 and 1870. Page had a studio at Eagleswood, NJ, and later in the Studio Building on 10th Street in Manhattan, where he held a large exhibition in 1867. In the 1860s, he painted a self-portrait and a companion portrait of Sophia set in Rome, as well as a series of civil war heroes including Robert Gould Shaw, Winfield Scott, and David Farragut. Photographs played a consistent part in Page's technique of portraiture, and he is known to have worked with the photographer Matthew Brady, who attended art classes early on with Page, as well as the photographers Sarony and Charles Williamson, who taught classes on drawing from enlarged photo-transparencies. Brady photographs taken for Page include David Farragut and Reuben Fenton.
Page lectured frequently on Titian and Venetian art, a subject in which he was considered an expert, and on painting technique and his philosophical ideas about nature, art, and spirituality. In 1871, Page was elected the president of the National Academy of Design, a post he held until 1873, but his poor health following a collapse in 1872 limited his accomplishments in office. Despite these limitations, he continued to paint, including portraits of General Grant, an idealized portrait of the president based on early photographs and Charles Sumner. He also became interested in portraiture of William Shakespeare around this time, and his studies resulted in a book, Shakespeare's Portraits, a bust based on existing portraiture, and a full-length portrait entitled "Shakespeare Reading," based on Page's measurements of a supposed death mask in Darmstadt, Germany, which he went to inspect against the advice of his doctor in 1874.
In 1877, another collapse left Page incapacitated for the remainder of his life. Sophia Page tried editing and publishing his writings and lectures, but with little success. Page died in 1885. A life marked by personal scandal ended the same, when two of his daughters from his first marriage contested his will, tying up his estate in a lengthy and public probate trial. Their suit was dismissed in 1889, and Sophia Page died in 1892.
This biography relies heavily on Joshua Taylor's William Page: The American Titian (1957).
Separated Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds materials lent for microfilming (reel 1091) including letters from Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Lydia Maria Child, Charlotte Cushman, James Russell Lowell, Charles A. Dana, and others. Lent material was returned to the donor and is This material is not described in the container listing of this finding aid.
Provenance:
A portion of the collection was donated to the Archives of American Art by Mrs. Lesslie S. (Pauline Page) Howell, William Page's grandaughter, in 1963. William S. Page, Pauline Page Howell's nephew, donated additional papers in 1964 and 1973. Pauline Page Howell and William S. Page also loaned a group of letters to the Archives in 1964 which were microfilmed on reel 1091 and then returned to the donors. Mrs. Howell's son, William Page Howell, donated material in 1980.
Letters of Charles F. Briggs to James Russell Lowell (Series 2.2) were a part of Pauline Page Howell's 1963 donation to the Archives of American Art. They had been given to Mrs. Howell by Charlotte Briggs, daughter of Charles F. Briggs, because of her father's lifelong friendship with William Page. Letters from Lowell to Briggs are in the James Russell Lowell papers in Houghton Library at Harvard University.
Restrictions:
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Portrait painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Portrait painting -- 19th century -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Sketches
Poems
Drawings
Diaries
Citation:
William Page and Page Family papers, 1815-1947, bulk 1843-1892. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
Letters in this series include the personal and professional correspondence of William Page, his wife, Sophia Candace Stevens Page, and their families, as well as correspondence of Sophia Page's first husband Stephen Hitchcock and his family.
William Page's correspondence is found from 1833 to 1885 only, with the bulk of his correspondence dating from 1852 to 1877. Drafts of outgoing letters written by William and Sophia Page are found throughout the series. Correspondence is arranged chronologically, with undated correspondence filed alphabetically by author at the end of the series. Correspondence of Page's children, which is voluminous from the early 1880s onward, and other family correspondence of the Page, Stevens, and Hitchcock families has not been indexed.
The earliest correspondence is that of Page's relatives of the Mathies, Dunnel, and Baldwin families of New York State. From 1840 through 1852, much of the correspondence is that of the Hitchcock family. See Series 2.3 for correspondence between Sophia and Steven Hitchcock. Love letters between William Page and Sophia (then Hitchcock) are prevalent in 1857, the year they were married. Family correspondence among Sophia Page, her parents, and her brothers Henry, B. Frank, and Simon Stevens is prevalent from the 1850s through the 1880s. By 1884, much of the correspondence is that of the Page children, including their personal, business, and family correspondence. A long, amorous correspondence from Charlotte "Sharly" Briggs to Candace "Dacie" Page, which documents an apparently intimate relationship between the two women, is found from the late 1880s onward, with many undated letters.
William Page's significant correspondents include artists such as Thomas Hicks, Enoch Wood Perry, William Stark, Theodore Tilton, and Lemuel Wilmarth; patrons Wendell Phillips, J. Hopper, William Walker Scranton, and Francis G. Shaw; writers James Russell Lowell, Charles Frederick Briggs (see also Series 2.2), George W. Curtis, and the actress Charlotte Cushman. An unusually lengthy letter from Page to a young artist "W" (possibly William Stark) about painting is dated 1860. Sophia Page's correspondents include Thomas K. Beecher, Mary Olmsted and Bertha Olmsted.
See Appendix for a list of selected correspondents from Series 2.1.
Appendix: Selected Correspondents from Series 2.1.:
The following is a selective list of correspondence of William and Sophia Page in Series 2.1: General Correspondence.
Spellings and abbreviations of names below reflect the actual signatures of letters. Names preceded by question marks indicate partially-legible signatures. Letters with unsigned and illegible signatures which could not be indexed are common in the correspondence, so this index should not be considered comprehensive.
Adam, Sarah W.: 1877-1878
Allan, W.G.: 1848
Allen, Elizabeth Akers: 1863-1864, 1880, 1885-1888, 1892, undated
Alsop, ?H.J.W.: 1871
Ammon, W.E.: 1887-1888
Appleton, Nathan: 1874
Arcadian Club: 1874
Armstrong, William: 1889
Austin Baldwin and Co.: 1863
Avery, Charles: 1870
Avery, Sam P.: undated
Badeau, Adam: 1866
Baker, H.: undated
Baker, W.J.: 1874
Balducci, Y.: 1855
Bard, M.I.: undated
Barney, C. H.: 1863
Barney, Hiram: undated
Bartholemew, E.: 1855-1856
Bartlett, C.E.: undated
Barton, Sam: 1870, 1879
Bates, L.: undated
Beardsley, Annie: 1885
Beatty, John W.: 1900, 1902
Becker, Dr.: undated
Beckwith, James Carroll: 1899
Beecher, Thomas K.: 1850, 1853-1854, undated
Bellinger, Louis: 1887
Benedict, Robert D.: 1856, 1876, 1886
Benedict, Taft, and Benedict: 1880
Benet, W.V.: 1861
?Bennett, J.R.: undated
Berdam, D.W.: 1861
Betty, Edward: 1875
Biglow, L.G.: 1883
Bigmore, Edward: 1880
Birney, E.P.: 1865
Blomeger, Georgina: undated
Boies, H.M.: 1875-1876
Bossange, H.: 1855
Bradford, J.F.: 1870
Brady, J.R.: 1873
Brehart, Mary: 1888, undated
Briggs, Charles Frederick: 1852, 1861, undated (see also series 2.2)
Briggs, Charlotte "Sharly": 1877, 1882-1883, 1886-1894, 1896, 1899, undated
Richards, T. Addision: 1882, 1886 (see also the letters used as evidence in Page's probate trial; Series 4)
Richmond, Victoria and J.W.B.: 1883, 1886
Rider, George S.J.: 1868
Ridner, Caroline: 1885, 1887
Rively, Mary: 1886-1887
Robertson, Ann Elize Worcester: 1877
Robinson, A.S.: 1852-1853, 1855, 1862
Robinson, E.: 1874
Robinson, George C.: 1868, undated
Robinson, Mrs. Jennie: 1870
Robinson, M.C.: 1853
Robinson, W.H.: 1875-1876
Rogers, John: undated
Rogers, W.K.: 1877
Rose, J.W.: 1882
?Rossel: 1878
Ruggles, Edward: 1861
Sanborn, ?O.H.: 1868
Sartain, John: 1875
Schultz, E.A.: 1873
Schuyler, Louisa Lee: 1877
Schwab, Charles M.: 1906
Scott, Frank H.: 1875
Scott, Julian: 1874
Scranton, William Walker: 1874-1875, 1877-1879, 187?, 1880-1881
Scribner editors: 1879
Searle, L.: undated
Sellstedt, L.G.: 1863-1864, undated
Shaw, Anna K: 1863, undated
Shaw, Francis George: 1850-1851, 1853-1855, 1859, 1861, 1863-1864, 1872-1874, 1876-1877, 1880-1881, undated (see also letters used as evidence in Page's probate trial; Series 4)
Shaw, Sarah B.: 1877, 1879, 1881, 1883, 1885-1889, 1892, undated
Shegogue, J.H.: 1848
Shelton, W.H.: 1905
Shinn, Earl: 1873
Shipman, Andrew: 1892
Shipman, Frank: 1886
Shipman, Mary C.: 1886, undated
Skinner, Mabel R.: 1879
Smith, Charles E.: 1868
Smith, J. Eustace: 1884
Southland, William D.: 1886
Spencer, L: 1862
Sperry, Watson: 1880
Spring, Jeanie: 1861
Spring, Marcus: 1867, 1869, 1872
Spring, R.B.: undated
Spring, Rebecca: 1886
Stafford, John: 1864, 1877
Stafford, O.H.: 1864
Stark, William and Madelaine: 1858, 1860-1862
Stebbins, A.: 1869
Stenton, Josephine: 1872
Stoddard, W.O.: 1870
Storrs, R.S.: 1870
Story, Mr. and Mrs. William Wetmore: 1850, undated
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
William Page and Page Family papers, 1815-1947, bulk 1843-1892. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
