Artists who envisioned the night of June 9, 1772

By KELLY SULLIVAN

Over the last two centuries, images of the burning of the Gaspee have been depicted through paintings, illustrations, etchings and engravings on everything from canvas and paper to pewter, bronze and silver. With each image typically entitled “The Burning of the Gaspee”, “The Destruction of the Gaspee” or “The Gaspee Affair”, numerous artists in various capacities may contain the immortalization of that historic night among their creations.

Several Rhode Island painters have captured the schooner’s destruction, including Charles DeWolf Brownell. Born in 1822, at a house located at 107 Westminster Street in Providence, Brownell was the son of a physician and encouraged to seek a career in law. In 1843, he was admitted to the Conn. Bar Association. Never in the peak of health and forced to spend winters in the south due to recurring lung congestion, Brownell fell into a depression during 1853. Reexamining his life, he realized that it was not the law he was passionate about, but art.

Giving up his law practice, Brownell began to study art and traveled to Cuba that year to paint its tropical scenery. He traveled the world, memorializing what he saw in oil, water color, pencil and pen and ink. One of his most famous works is “The Charter Oak” which he painted in 1857, the year after the mighty Conn. landmark fell during a summer storm. Believed to be over 1,000 years old, the tree had been the hiding place chosen by Captain Joseph Wadsworth during the 17th-century to conceal King Charles II’s charter of the old colony of Conn. The oil on canvas had been on loan to the New England Building at the 1901 World’s Fair in NY when the building it was contained in was partially destroyed by fire. Insured for $1,000, the painting was removed undamaged from the structure.

Brownell opened a studio in NY in 1860, a full display of his landscapes and hauntingly lifelike historical scenes. In 1892, he painted the Gaspee aflame in an expanse of water while men in longboats watch from the near distance.

Robert James Pailthorpe was 50 years old when the RI Bicentennial Commission sought him out to do a painting of the Gaspee’s destruction in 1976. Born in Providence on March 31, 1926, the future maritime artist grew up in a home on Dixon Street, the son of a dry goods store salesman. He attended Sackett Public School in Providence and enlisted in the Army Air Corp in 1944. He later relocated to Cranston.

The son of a commercial artist, Karl Robert Rittmann was born on Dec. 1, 1919 in Providence. He grew up on Albert Avenue in Cranston and attended Lockwood High School in Warwick. While residing at Cedar Tree Point in Apponaug, he attended the RI School of Design and went on to work as an art teacher at Warwick Veterans Memorial High School before becoming vice principal of the institution.

As an artist, Rittmann concentrated on RI people, landmarks and landscapes. His work included images in pen and ink, pastel, charcoal, oil on canvas, oil on board and oil on tile. Some of his images were purchased by greeting card companies.

Rittmann also illustrated posters and painted murals, which grace many buildings across the state. From

1936 to 1999, he completed a portrait of every Warwick governor. A mural Rittmann created of the burning of the Gaspee is within the Scottish Rite Temple in Pawtuxet. He passed away in Warwick on Aug. 31, 2001.

Artist Robert Charles Haun, born in Boston in 1903, eventually relocated with his family to Providence where his father built the framework for construction projects. Haun was employed as superintendent at the department store Callender, McAuslan & Troup Company in Providence throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. He then concentrated on art, developing the theme of the Alpine Dining Room in the newly built Lindsey Tavern in Pawtucket, in 1948. To further enhance the ambiance, Haun painted Swiss scenes upon wall panels on three sides of the room.

In 1951, Haun was commissioned by Helene (Kelly) Burrell, the wife of Edward Burrell, owner of Sullivan Shoe Company on Westminster Street in Providence. Mrs. Burrell had decorated her Point Judith summer home “Rough Waters” with all manner of Madonna images. Haun completed two modern pastel sketches for her; “Madonna of the Roses” and “Madonna with Star Nimbus.”

In 1960, Haun was commissioned by Antonio Ribeiro, a Portuguese native residing in Central Falls. The man claimed to have had a vision of Christ in 1918 and provided the details for Haun’s oil painting of the experience. Haun later moved to Cranston and was known for painting church interiors throughout New England. He was also one of three artists who painted the dome of the RI State House.

A painting of the Gaspee’s last hours was created by Haun and, according to Gaspee.org, was last seen in 2000 and appeared to contain smoke damage. That source also states that the painting originally hung in a Newport Creamery and then in Gaspee Lounge.

East Providence resident Karl Doerflinger is the artist behind the Gaspee painting recently selected for a new Rhode Island license plate design. Doerflinger was born in Ohio in the autumn of 1950 and attended Grand River Academy where he showed an interest in art through studies in ceramics and painting. He later graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Known as a folk artist with talent for quaint small-town scenes, Doerflinger is a member of the Providence Art Club and taught painting for over ten years.

Dozens of additional paintings depicting the Gaspee ablaze can be attributed to present-day artists and artists residing outside of RI.