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Hawkins, Rush Christopher (1831-1920)

Role:
Dates:
Portrait Location: Annmary Brown Memorial
Artist: Melchers, Gari (1861-1932)
Portrait Date: 1908
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30
Framed Dimensions:
Brown Portrait Number: 97
Brown Historical Property Number: 2252

Rush Christopher Hawkins was a native of Pomfret, Vermont. When only 15 years of age, he enlisted to fight in the Mexican-American War. After the war, he studied law and made New York his home. In 1860, he married Annmary Brown (see BP 89 and 90), the granddaughter of Nicholas Brown (see BP 2 and 85), for whom Brown University was named in 1804. The Civil War would again call him to duty: he served as Colonel with the 9th New York Volunteers and became Brigadier General in 1866. Hawkins was a renowned book collector, specializing in early print editions, and as a noted art connoisseur and collector of early modern representational paintings. Catalogs of his extensive and exquisite collections were published. He felt committed to what he considered refining the American public's aesthetic sense and taste for fine art. C. H. Collins Baker, who published the catalog of Hawkins's art collection in 1903, elaborates on the "patriotic motive behind Hawkins' collection building efforts" in his preface: "[P]atriotic Americans have pledged themselves to make up for America's lack of an art heritage by importing the finest examples of European and Eastern art that fall within their range" (Annmary Brown Memorial web site).

Hawkins was appointed assistant "Commissaire Expert des Beaux Arts" for the United States Commission at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. The rejection of ten of James McNeill Whistler's twenty-seven submissions for inclusion in the representative selection of American art caused an open dispute between Hawkins and Whistler. Christopher Rush Hawkins died at the age of 90, when he was struck by an automobile while crossing a street near his home in New York City.

Gari Melchers presented this portrait to Brown in 1908. Melchers was born in Detroit in 1861. He studied with his father, Julius Melchers, and in Dusseldorf and Paris. His work, along with that of John Singer Sargent, was honored by an honorable mention at the 1886 Paris Salon. He is best known for his impressionist works. Though he spent much of his artistic career abroad, Melchers died in the United States, in Virginia, in 1932.