They maligned his pretensions because he was honest enough to call his method for accomplishing what he attempted “a process.” Surely, judging from results, it was superior to any other known method of obtaining a life mask, and it seems most unfortunate that his “process” has to be counted among “the lost arts”; for neither he nor his son, who was acquainted with both the composition and the method of applying it, has left a word of information on the subject. When the public press attacked Browere and his method for the rumored maltreatment of President Jefferson, he replied: “Mr. Browere never has followed and never will follow the usual course, knowing it to be fallacious and absolutely bad. The manner in which he executes portrait-busts from life is unknown to all but himself, and the invention is his own, for which he claims exclusive rights, but it is infinitely milder than the usual course.” That his method of taking the mask was accomplished without discomfort to the subject is fully attested by the number of persons who submitted to it, as also by the many certificates given by Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Lafayette, Gilbert Stuart, and others to that effect.
In the following letter from Browere to Trumbull it will be seen the writer does not attempt to conceal his feelings of resentment:
New York, 12 July, 1826.
Sir:
The very illiberal and ungentleman-like manner in which Col. Trumbull treated the execution, &c., of my portrait-busts of Ex-President Adams and Honorable Charles Carroll with the statue of Ex-President Jefferson, late displayed in the banquetting hall of the Hon. Common Council of New York, has evidenced a personal ill-will and hostility to me that I shall not pass over in silence. The envy and jealousy inherent in your nature and expressed in common conversations intimate to me a man of a perverse and depraved mind.
Rest assured, Sir, I fear not competition with you as a portrait or historic painter; I know your fort, and your failings. To convince you that I know somewhat of the Arts of Design, I shall immediately commence an analysis of your four pictures painted for Congress, and shall endeavor therein to refer to each and every figure plagiarized from English and other prints. Your assertion to me that you made your portraits therein to correspond with their characters, will assuredly go for as much as they deserve. In my opinion, ideal likenesses ought not to be palmed on a generous public for real ones.
Remember what was said on the floor of Congress in reference to your four celebrated pictures: “Instead of being worth $32,000 they were not worth 32 cents.” In remembering this remember that “nemo me impune lacessit.” And by attending to your own concerns you will retain a reputation or name of being an able artist and not a slanderer.
Browere, Sculptor.
Colonel Trumbull has endorsed this letter: “Browere. Poor man! too much vanity hath made him mad.”
However, from a letter written three years later to the Directors of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, and “Favored by Col. Trumbull,” it would appear that the two artists had healed their differences; but Browere’s feeling of resentment toward the National Academy of Design knew no abatement. He was kept out of the National Academy by Dunlap, who also ignored him in his malevolent and unreliable “History of the Arts of Design in the United States.” The cause for this, as stated by Browere’s son, was that before Browere had ever met Dunlap he was asked his opinion of Dunlap’s painting of “Death on the Pale Horse,” then on public exhibition. He replied: “It’s a strong work, but looks as if it were painted by a man with but one eye.” This remark was reported to Dunlap, who actually had but one eye. He was mortally offended at the sculptor’s insight, and became his undying enemy. Browere wrote to the Academy as follows: