Photograph by Ed Pollard, Hasselblad H4D50 - 2018.

John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War

Artist Charles Bird King (American, 1785 - 1862)

CultureAmerican

Date1818-1820

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions36 1/8 x 28 1/2 in. (91.8 x 72.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 42 x 34 x 4 in. (106.7 x 86.4 x 10.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Grandy family in memory of C. Wiley Grandy

Object number58.85.1

Not on view

DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas portrait painting. The sitter, John Caldwell Calhoun, sits in a red armchair and is dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons. There is an implied table in front of him, supporting a map. The young cabinet secretary holds the map with the thumb and fingers of his left hand, pointing with his right index finger at a place identified on the map as Council Bluff on the Missouri River and a "Road to Chariton," marked by a diagonal red line (on the northeast corner of the new state of Missouri and nearby territory). Calhoun looks intently out of the frame. At the time this portrait was painted this politician from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, a was the Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President James Monroe 1817-1825. He became the Vice President in 1825 under the Presidency of John Quincy Adams and was reelected in 1828 to serve under Andrew Jackson in the same position.

Label TextCharles Bird King American, 1785—1862 John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, 1818-20 Oil on canvas John C. Calhoun (1782—1850) served as secretary of war under President James Monroe during a period that saw the United States accelerate exploration of its recently-acquired territories west of the Mississippi River. Calhoun holds a map depicting the Missouri Territory and directs the viewer to the point at which the military built its first outpost west of the Mississippi. That outpost, Fort Atkinson, was established in 1819. Charles Bird King painted Calhoun’s portrait back east in Washington D.C., where the neatly drawn map and the cabinet secretary’s commanding presence obscure the often brutal and complicated realities of western expansion. Gift of the Grandy family in memory of C. Wiley Grandy 58.85.1 ProvenanceThe commission for the painting came to Charles Bird King from Joseph Delaplaine of Philadelphia, who accumulated a gallery of portraits and published many of them in his _Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans_; The artist, or possibly Joseph Delaplaine, may have owned the work through 1825, based on repeated exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the artists' estate went to Redwood Library upon his death, yet this piece did not, indicating someone other than the artist owned the work. Exhibition HistoryPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1822, no. 331. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1823, no. 286. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1824, no. 20. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1825, no. 160. "Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976. "The Paintings of Charles Bird King (1785-1862)," National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., November 4, 1977 - January 22, 1978. "Behind the Seen: The Chrysler's Hidden Museum," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., October 21, 2005 - February 19, 2006. "Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008. Published ReferencesNorfolk Museum of Arts & Sciences staff, "C. Wiley Grandy and Robert Baylor Tunstall," _Norfolk Museum Bulletin_ 8, nos. 3-4 (November-December 1958): 37. Dennis R. Anderson, _Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum_, exh. cat., Norfolk, Va., 1975, 82. Andrew J. Cosentino, _The Paintings of Charles Bird King (1785-1862)_, exh. cat., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., 1977, 53-54, 125, no. 26. Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 39, no. 15. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6 Kenneth Haltman, _Looking Close and Seeing Far: Samuel Seymour, Titian Ramsay Peale, and the Art of the Long Expedition, 1818-1823_ (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008) 174. ISBN: 978-0-271-02982-5 Amy R. W. Meyers, ed. _Knowing Nature: Art and Science in Philadelphia, 1740-1840._ New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. p. 330, fig 1, fig 2. ISBN 9788-0-300-11104-0