James A. Van Dyke,

1852

In 1851 the Fire Department of Detroit commissioned this grand portrait "as a token of high esteem and affectionate regard" for James A. Van Dyke (1813–1855), the city’s former mayor and longtime promoter of its fire company. Van Dyke served as the company’s president from 1847 to 1851, orchestrating the funding and construction of the group’s new Firemen’s Hall, toward which he gestures in the painting. Hicks’s portrait—among the largest produced in a successful career that included the first painted likeness of Abraham Lincoln—was acclaimed from the moment it was installed in the building’s central meeting room. According to the Detroit Tribune, "We do not remember any other work of art which has been the object of so genuine a public ovation." The painting shows the hall already being put to use, as firemen set off from it to battle the blaze burning out of sight in the background.