Amongst the old letters recently discovered with the precious folios of Edouart’s duplicates is one from “S. H.,” dated Birmingham, June 1st, 1838:—
“My dear Friend,—On seeing your Exhibition, I was astonished at the application you must have bestowed on an art I had till then considered as useless. I found likenesses of unrivalled talent, not only accurate outlines, but giving the character of those whom they represented. Write to me from America. The Americans are known to encourage talent of every description, and I hope to see you return laden with the produce of your labours in that fresh and interesting country to the place you are now quitting.”
For how long Edouart had been contemplating his American tour we are not aware. In the year 1839 he was in Liverpool, working at his profession. In the same year he sailed for the United States, taking with him his volumes of English, Scotch, and Irish portraits for exhibition purposes.
He seems to have met with immediate success, and the volumes which contain his American portraits give so complete a pictorial record of the social and political history of the time (1839-1849) as probably no other nation possesses. During his first year three hundred and eighty-one portraits were taken in New York, Saratoga, Boston, and Philadelphia, amongst them being Mr. Belmont, who is entered as “August Belmont, Agent of the House of Rothschild, New York.” There are two portraits, 8½ inches in height, of this man, who was an important social and financial figure of the day, and founder of the Jockey Club of New York; congress-men, editors, journalists, and officers of the Army and Navy in uniform.
The wives and children of these interesting men are also included in the collection, and later, when he visited New Orleans and other States where slavery was permitted, we find occasionally a slave’s picture “belonging” to the family. As in his English collections, the names of his sitters, the date, and name of place where taken, and sometimes curious details such as height and weight, are all entered, not only beneath each portrait in the folio, but also at the back of the portrait itself; and also in his list-books newspaper cuttings are sometimes added. In 1840 five hundred and thirty-one portraits were taken in the same places, in Washington and Saratoga Springs. Major-General Winfield Scott (Commander-in-Chief) is amongst them.
The year 1841 was the time of the great Log Cabin election, and Harrison, the hero, is shown with two autographs in Edouart’s books, besides his whole Cabinet and the orators, demagogues, place-hunters, and abolitionists, who all seem to have visited the studio of the artist, whatever their political opinions. Seven hundred and sixty-five portraits were taken in this year at Washington and elsewhere.
After the tragic death of Harrison, John Tyler, the only man who was President without election, was taken by Edouart, and it gave the author great pleasure to present to the American nation his autographed silhouette. It was taken at the White House in 1841, and was returned there through Mr. Taft in June, 1911, after seventy years’ wandering. When arranging the presentation, His Excellency, James Bryce, our Ambassador in Washington, was much interested, because Edouart had visited his old home in the north of Ireland and cut the portraits of his father and grandfather, which are still preserved there, and are fine likenesses.
In 1842 Edouart travelled further afield, and made six hundred and forty-one pictures in New Orleans and other States he had not yet visited; in Cambridge he cut Longfellow, the Appleton family, the President of Harvard, and dozens of professors and students of the College.
In 1843 four hundred and sixty of the citizens of Philadelphia, New York, Saratoga Springs, Norwich (Conn.), Charlestown, and other towns too numerous to mention, were taken, named, dated, and placed in his folios. There are an interesting crowd of congress-men, senators, financial celebrities, actors, musicians, editors, men of science, and the members of the Army and Navy, mostly in uniform, including Macomb, then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.