Peter Gansevoort’s portrait: a portrait of a portrait at Fort Stanwix

The only known image of Colonel Peter Gansevoort made in his lifetime is a Gilbert Stuart painting from about 1794, so the portrait of him at Fort Stanwix National Monument, painted by Cuyler Ten Eyck, was made with the Stuart image in mind: a portrait of a portrait. The National Park Service tells its story.

A portrait of General Peter Gansevoort, later in life. Cuyler Ten Eyck, National Park Service.

The sitter

Peter Gansevoort commanded Fort Schuyler (Stanwix) during the siege of 1777 and famously wrote that he would “defend this fort and garrison to the last extremity.” He came from a long line of Dutch colonists. One grandson, Guert Gansevoort, became an American naval officer who served 45 years, through the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. Another, Herman Melville, wrote Moby Dick.

The painter

Cuyler Ten Eyck was born around 1866 and died at his home in New York City in 1938. His obituary says he ran the Ten Eyck Garage and a cigar stand at the New York State Capitol and was “known to hundreds.” He was apparently also an artist, but it is nearly impossible to find images of his other work, and little else is known about his life.

One of his brothers, Peter Gansevoort Ten Eyck, held various political offices, including U.S. Congressman for New York State and state agricultural secretary; another, Albert, was a bankruptcy arbitrator. The family was among the earliest Dutch families in New Amsterdam. Its patriarch, Coenraedt Ten Eyck, led it from Germany to the Netherlands to North America, settling in New Netherland in the 1630s as a shoemaker, tanner and landowner. His descendants included mayors, politicians, officers of the law, soldiers, artists, athletes and a San Francisco Gold Rush forty-niner. The Ten Eyck and Gansevoort families intermarried and admired each other.

A Peter Gansevoort Ten Eyck campaign button from one of his two terms in Congress. He was Cuyler’s brother and the namesake of Colonel Peter Gansevoort. Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why paint a portrait of a portrait

Because the two men’s lives never overlapped, Ten Eyck must have worked from the Stuart image. The article gives convenience and the wish to own art as possible reasons, since a copy is cheaper and easier than an original, but thinks the likeliest is the family connection: a tribute to the man his brother was named for and a pillar of the family’s past. In style it is late 19th-century American, a tradition known for “hagiography,” idealizing the subject’s features. It is oil on canvas, in a frame of brass leaf and silver leaf with yellow varnish.

Conservation

The Ten Eyck family donated the heirloom portrait to Fort Stanwix National Monument in 2013. It went to Massachusetts, where conservators at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center cleaned and treated it. Besides dirt, it had flaking and cracked paint, a small tear and a small scratch. Linen was added behind the canvas to take pressure off paint and canvas that had been stretched for over a hundred years, and the frame was cleaned and small parts of its ornament restored.

Left: before conservation began in 2013. Right: after conservation, in 2015. Credit: National Park Service.

The portrait came back to the park in 2015. To protect it and its frame it must lie on its back rather than hang, so it rotates in and out of public view. As of the source, it was kept in the park’s main collections holding area, at controlled humidity and temperature and out of damaging light.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument, “Peter Gansevoort Portrait”; the collage photograph of conservators and family members is left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.