Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 61, originally released in print form in 2021. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2021 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
WAITING for the Hour Of Emancipation William Tolman Carlton’s Painting Captures a Historic Moment
WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASS OCIATION / WHITE HOUSE C OLLEC TION
WILLIAM KLOSS
WAITING FOR THE HOUR—the abbreviated title of the painting that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House today—depicts a congregation of enslaved Africans on the eve of January 1, 1863, moments before the Emancipation Proclamation would take effect. The artist William Tolman Carlton (1816–1888) may have conceived his painting when the preliminary announcement of the proclamation was made, on September 22, 1862. The composition is profoundly simple, but the red-brown palette cloaks the scene in obscurity, especially in reproduction. Set within a barnlike space is a crowd of figures, illuminated by a flaring torch. Through a doorway at the left, one glimpses others; above them glows a cross with a star in its center in the night sky. In the doorway stands a man with the Union flag draped over his arms. At his feet a woman prostrates herself in awe and supplication. From this point a rising diagonal orders the throng. A handsomely dressed white woman, with tears in her eyes, gazes at the black woman beside her. The only white person present, she is picked out by the light, suggesting that she may be the slaves’ mistress, joining them for the moment of deliverance. For the artist she also embodied the abolitionist movement.
23
P E T E R V I TA L E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N
Known today as the Lincoln Bedroom, this room in the southeast corner of the Second Floor of the White House was once President Abraham Lincoln’s office. Watch Meeting– Dec, 31, 1862–Waiting for the Hour by William Carlton can be seen hanging above the desk, where one of only five copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln’s hand is displayed. Fittingly, it was in this room that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Reflected in the mirror is an engraving of Francis B. Carpenter’s 1862 painting First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
24
white house history quarterly
white house history quarterly
25
26
white house history quarterly
A L L I M A G E S T H I S S P R E A D : W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N
At the center of Carlton’s painting (opposite), a half dozen figures cluster around a crate turned on end. Partly visible lettering reveals that it contained supplies of the Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross. Now it has become a kind of altar, promising spiritual rather than physical succor. An old man in white shirt and red vest holds a large pocket watch with a fob in the shape of an anchor, a Christian symbol of hope. Most eyes are turned toward the watch, whose hands proclaim five minutes before midnight—before emancipation. The watch is the compositional center of the picture, spotlit and framed in the dark hand. The left hand lightly touches a book, presumably the Bible. The diagonal rise culminates in the torchbearer (right), whose nude torso and togalike drapery recall classical allegorical figures, and whose brand illuminates not only the scene below but also the Emancipation Proclamation itself nailed to the wall. The selectively legible words begin “PROCLAMATION/I Abraham LINCOLN” and conclude “SHALL BE EVER FREE ON JANUARY 1. 1863.” Most moving of all, perhaps, is the inscription that gives the painting its title on links of chain across the bottom (above). In the composition and in some individual figures are found echoes of Italian art, but it is a native spirit, informed by passionate belief, that resonates from this painting.
white house history quarterly
27
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Watch Meeting was sent to President Abraham Lincoln in the White House as a gift from the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in July 1865. Garrison’s disappointment when the gift was not promptly acknowledged prompted an exchange of letters between him and the president. On January 21, 1864, Garrison sent Lincoln a four-page letter (pages 1 and 2, top left) pointing out that although his “friend Mr. Sumner” had seen the picture at the White House, “no acknowledgment has been made . . . of the receipt of the picture.” The president soon replied (draft, bottom left) by explaining that his “seeming neglect” had been occasioned by his “constant engagements” and that his “thanks, though late, are most cordial.” Satisfied with Lincoln’s response, Garrison begins his six–page reply, dated February 13, 1865, (page 1, bottom right) by observing that he is pleased that the acknowledgment put him in possession of the president’s autograph and continues with the observation that the president must be “almost literally crushed, by the multitudinous matters constantly pressing upon” him.
28
white house history quarterly
LEF T: ALAMY / RIGHT: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
The prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (portrait by unknown artist, c. 1855, above left) arranged for the purchase of the Watch Meeting and sent it to the White House as a gift. The artist William Tolman Carlton (selfportrait above right) was active in Boston in the midnineteenth century.
Largely unknown today, Carlton in 1863–64 could count among his students and patrons many abolitionists, including the prominent Lowell clan of New England.1 A number of these patrons subscribed to the purchase of his Waiting for the Hour, sending it to President Lincoln under the aegis of the leader of the antislavery movement, William Lloyd Garrison. The painting was delivered to the White House in early July 1864. When the president, preoccupied during the closing months of the war, failed to acknowledge receipt of the gift, Garrison wrote to him (January 21, 1865) about the picture, “deemed by critics and connoisseurs, artistically speaking, an admirable painting,” whose donors had contributed “upwards of five hundred dollars.” He continued, “This meritorious picture [was] executed by a most conscientious and excellent artist.”2 The painting apparently left the White House with Mrs. Lincoln after the assassination. The version now in the White House is neither signed nor dated. It came into the collection during the Nixon administration, having descended in the artist’s family. It was probably the artist’s first, sketchier study; the Garrison–Lincoln painting most likely is another canvas, presently unlocated.3
NOTES This text is from William Kloss, Art in the White House, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 158–59, 202–03. 1.
William T. Carlton was born in Boston and by 1863 had already exhibited at the Athenaeum. He studied in Florence, from 1837 until 1840, and then set up his studio in Boston, where he specialized in portraits and genre pictures. In 1851 he and George Hollingsworth founded the Lowell Institute in Boston, where they taught drawing until the school was disbanded in 1879. A number of his works are preserved in Cooperstown at the New York State Historical Association, and a self-portrait of about 1839 is owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). Historic New England was given the Self-Portrait by Carlton’s daughter in 1931 accompanied by a letter in which she briefly outlined her father’s career. I am indebted to Richard C. Nylander, former curator of collections, for this information.
2. William Lloyd Garrison to Abraham Lincoln, January 21, 1865, John G. Nicolay Papers (microfilm edition). Library of Congress. Garrison added, intriguingly, in the letter that “many photographic copies were made of it, and it was by my advice that it was presented to you as the most fitting person in the world to receive it.” I have not seen any such photographs. 3. The Garrison-Lincoln painting, of the same size but more highly finished, signed and dated 1863, was sold at auction in 1979 (location unknown). In Christie’s, American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th & 20th Centuries, New York, Oct. 24, 1979. The only provenance given for this version was Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, through whom the White House painting also came from the artist’s descendants.
white house history quarterly
29