Browere died, after only a few hours’ illness, of cholera; and it is pathetic to picture the disappointed sculptor, on his deathbed, directing, as he did, that the heads should be sawed off the most important busts, and boxed up for forty years, at the end of which period he hoped their exhibition would elicit recognition for their merit and value as historical portraits from life. This directed mutilation was not made; but the busts never saw the light of day until the Centennial year, when a few of them were placed on exhibition in Philadelphia. But not being connected with the national celebration, they were a mere side-show, and were not in a position to attract attention. Indeed, the fact of their exhibition was unheralded, and has only recently become known.
Call Browere’s work what one will,—process, art, or mechanical,—the result gives the most faithful portrait possible, down to the minutest detail, the very living features of the breathing man, a likeness of the greatest historical significance and importance. A single glance will show the marked difference between Browere’s work and the ordinary life cast by the sculptor or modeller, no matter how skilful he may be. Browere’s work is real, human, lifelike, inspiring in its truthfulness, while other life masks, even the celebrated ones by Clark Mills, who made so many, are dead and heavy, almost repulsive in their lifelessness. It seems next to marvelous how he was able to preserve so wonderfully the naturalness of expression. His busts are imbued with animation; the individual character is there, so simple and direct that, next to the living man, he has preserved for us the best that we can have—a perfect facsimile. One experiences a satisfaction in contemplating these busts similar to that afforded by the reflected image of the daguerreotype. Both may be “inartistic” in the sense that the artist’s conception is wanting; but for historical human documents they outweigh all the portraits ever limned or modelled.
Browere left a wife and eight children, his second child and eldest son, Alburtis D. O. Browere, inheriting the artistic temperament of the father. He was born at Tarrytown, March 17, 1814, and died at Catskill, February 17, 1887. After his father’s death, he entered the schools of the National Academy of Design, and, in 1841, gained the first prize of $100, in competition with twenty-four others, for his picture of “Canonicus Treating with the English,” as detailed in Thatcher’s “Lives of the Indians.” Previous to this, when only eighteen years old, he was awarded a silver medal, by the American Institute in New York, “for the best original oil painting,” the title of which has been forgotten. He painted several pictures with Rip Van Winkle as the subject, and among his contemporaries and friends was highly appreciated as an artist and as a man. He went to California soon after the opening to the east of that El Dorado, where he remained several years, painting many pictures of mining scenes. It was he who added the draperies to the busts made from his father’s life masks—an addition much to be regretted; but, on the other hand, it was his filial reverence that preserved these invaluable human documents, and has permitted us to see and know how many of the great characters who have gone before really appeared in the flesh, how they actually looked when they lived and moved and had their being.
IV
The Captors of André
HILE Arnold is handed down with execration to future times, posterity will repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Williams.” These words of Alexander Hamilton, written to John Laurens shortly after the taking of André, form a fitting text for the chapter introducing Browere’s busts of those patriots. It is fitting, because of the varying winds that have blown over the subject, swaying public opinion first one way and then the other; until finally the full prophecy of Hamilton is accepted as the right judgment of posterity. Of course, my comments refer only to the captors of André; there never has been but one judgment as to the execrated Arnold.