On view
Wilmerding Pavilion
Libby Anschutz Gallery
John Kintzing Kane,
1827
More Context
Handbook Entry
Although dated 1828, portraitist John Neagle’s account book suggests his rendering of John Kintzing Kane was actually completed in 1827. The prominent Philadelphia lawyer had earlier shocked his Federalist peers by supporting Democrat Andrew Jackson, whose election as president in 1828 garnered Kane the position of city solicitor that year — a plausible reason for the later date, inserted as a commemorative gesture. The portrait occupies an important place in Neagle’s work, as among his first images showing the subject in action, as opposed to self-consciously posing. Depicted consulting a presumably legal volume, Kane looks to his left, against the rightward cant of his book and body, supplying a pictorial animation amplified by the shadows surrounding him.
Information
1827
North America, United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
- F.J. Mather, Jr., "Portrait of John Kintzing Kane by John Neagle", Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University 4, no. 1 (1945): p. 2., p. 2
- Donald D. Egbert, Princeton Portraits, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947)., fig. 91; p. 139-140
- University Collections, (New York: College Art Association of America, 1956)., cat. no. 34
- Joseph C. Sloane, Oeuvres d'art des musées universitaires américains : Peintures, Sculptures anciennes et modernes, (Lyon?: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1957)., cat. no. 26
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 98-99
