Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1899 — A CONVIVIAL ARTIST. [ARTICLE]

A CONVIVIAL ARTIST.

Famous Portrait Painter Who Did Not Follow Hie Uncle’s Teachings. John Wesley Jarvis, an Englishman by birth and an American by adoption, was for many years the best portrait painter in the city of New York, where be died In 1840. “I was the best painter,” he used to say, humorously, “because others were worse than bad—so bad was the best” When Jarvis’ father emigrated to the United fitateqhe left the son in charge of his uncle, the celebrated founder of Methodism, with whom he remained until he was five years old, when he was sent to Philadelphia where his father resided. The uncle was pious and methodical, but so slightly was the nephew impressed by his teaching and example that his after life was as unmarked by piety as it was dotted all over with disorder, shiftlessness and irregularity. While Jarvis was painting the portrait of Bishop Benjamin Moore of New York, the subject of religion became the topic of conversation at one of the sittings. Jarvis had modeled in clay a head of Thomas Paine, with whom he was intimate and in the same house with whom he lived. Doubtless these facts prompted the bishop to ask Jarvis several searching questions as to his personal faith and practice. The painter, who was a wit and quick with a retort, seemed intent at that moment on catching some feature of the prelate's face-. Waving his hand, he said:

“Turn your face more that way. and shut your mouth!” The artist had wandered far away from the religion of his distinguished uncle. John Wesley was noted as a man of method and order. What.the nephew was, In the day of his success, may be seen from the description of his painting room, given by William Dunlap in his “History of the Arts of Design.” “Easels, palettes, some fresh set and others with dry paint on them, brushes dean and otherwise, pictures finished or half-finished or just begun, a table in the eentet'-bf the room with glasses, bottles, decanters, empty or half filled, chalk and scraps of paper, with or without sketches, and in the midst a lady's hat find shawl. Once I found there bls wife with her infant and a cradle and all the etceteras of the nursery.” The artist, being fond of notoriety, dressed when be walked out In a long coat trimmed with furs, and was accompanied by two large dogs, one of which carried the market basket. The painter's humor, his convivial habits, his story telling and his talents as an artist made him a favored guest, and the bouses of social magnates were open to him. “But the fiddle is hung behind the street door when the player is with his family,” says an old saw. The merry, story telling ®rtist made his home a house of mourning. His convivial indulgence turned him into a paralytic, and be who once .kept the table to a roar gave sluggish utterance to unjointed words. “Alas, poor Yorick!”