Anthony Van Corlear – The Trumpeter of New Amsterdam

Anthony Van Corlear – The Trumpeter of New Amsterdam is one of the major works of Millet’s Colonial genre paintings. An engraving of the work appeared in Harper’s Weekly, May 3,1890, Vol 34 No.1741 and is accompanied by a glowing report of the painting as worthy of being owned by the “public” and encouraging the Metropolitan Museum of Art to acquire it as soon as possible.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011446161&view=1up&seq=356&size=200&q1=Van%20Corlear

The large horizontal painting of “Anthony Van Corlear – The Trumpeter of New Amsterdam” is a rather special painting by FD Millet, in that it is the clubs tradition that the face of Van Corlear, surrounded by the ladies is Millet himself.  Other’s who have studied the painting believe that the man behind Van Corlear, dressed in black and smoking a pipe, is that of Millet. It is likely that viewers today would agree Millet is certainly one of the two men.  It is possible that both men are Millet. 

We know that Millet often used his wife, Lily, as a model for two women in the same painting, such as he did in “How the Gossip Grew.” So painting himself as both Van Corlear and the quite man listening to everything going on is    reasonable to consider.  Representing himself as both kind of men, bountifully joyous, as well as introspective, would perfectly fit Millet’s wry sense of humor!

While several artists have painted Van Corlear, he is actually the imaginary character on one of Washington Irving’s colonial stories.  However his fame has spread so widely, many believe him to have been real.  A well known stained glass window, by Millet friend and associate Howard Pyle, was created for the Colonial Club in 1893.  Pyle and Millet both did windows with Tiffany Glass during this period and likely were mutually inspired to do their own versions of the Irving tale.  Millet showed his large painting in the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and in an 1892 letter to Century Magazine of 1892, art critic and friend of Millet, William Coffin mentions the painting, although the club history shows that Andrew Mellon donated the painting in 1889, though the Columbian Exposition omits the ownership by the club in their catalog.

A March 9, 2002, newspaper article by the Old Post Gazette, in Pittsburgh, recounts a an interesting history of their acquisition of the painting directly from Millet, in a new illustrated book for their club members. The book was written by University of Pittsburgh art and architecture professor David Wilkins.  The newspaper recounts the paintings donation to the Club as follows:  “Andrew Mellon donated an 1889 painting by Francis David Millet, a Massachusetts native who studied at Harvard and abroad and went down on the Titanic. In depicting a scene from a Washington Irving book, “History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker,” Millet painted himself as a colorful, mustachioed character popular with the ladies. It hung in the dining room where Frick took his lunch; in 1897 he wrote to Millet that “it is a pleasure to be able to see your cheerful countenance.”

Newspaper link:  http://old.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20020309club0309fnp6.asp

The Harper’s magazine story and two page spread of the painting supports the painting having been painted sometime circa 1889 prior to its being shown at the Academy of Design Exhibition of 1890 in New York.

Colear is often misspelled in the literature as Corlaer, however going to a copy of KNICKERBOCKER’S HISTORY OF NEW YORK,   BY WASHINGTON IRVING
Published by W.B. CONKEY COMPANY, CHICAGO and reproduced by the Gutenberg project, the correct spelling his Corlear.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13042/13042-h/13042-h.htm