Home Is Where the Art Is: Interpretation and Virginia in the American Canon

• In Event: Canons, Collecting, and Object Homes in American Art

Abstract

The canon of early American art is overwhelmingly dominated by northern artists and portraits in spite of the fact that historically, Virginia was one of the most politically and economically influential colonies. Virginia's cultural importance continued into the mid-nineteenth century, and yet, art historians rarely pay attention to early Virginia. I argue that examples of portraits from colonial Virginia can force reconsideration of the American canon, especially in regards to interpreting race and gender. In this paper, I suggest that the neglect of early Virginia art by scholars derives largely from misunderstanding the function of the portrait in a slave-based plantation society and from the importance of paintings in inaccessible collections. In the plantation south, especially in Virginia, the intended repository for many portraits was the family's great house. I argue that genealogical narratives embedded in the portraits depended on being seen as a collection and in conjunction with the plantation landscape and architectural spaces of display. Today, many portraits remain in descendants' private collections in the ancestral plantation home, resulting in a number of significant works of art remaining inaccessible to the public. I compare the stories of three Virginia family portrait collections that have evolved over the past three centuries to ask, where do these portraits belong? Whose homes/landscapes matter? To what extent can private artwork enter the canon? First, the dispersed Byrd family portraits are mostly in museum collections, largely in storage. Second, the Hill-Carter collection, is privately owned at Shirley Plantation but visible to the public on house tours. The third example, the Tayloe collection, is entirely private at the ancestral home of Mount Airy. All three collections have the potential to expand the dominant narratives of early American art and reveal the importance of "home" to paintings both in the past and present.

Author

• Janine Yorimoto Boldt, College of William and Mary (VA)