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John McClintock
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Albany Artist, Academy Friend
Profile of Asa Weston Twitchell
John McClintock
Asa W. Twitchell, “Self Portrait,” 1884
Archives and Collections of The Albany Academies
Copyright 2012, John McClintock, Delmar, New York
Former Twitchell Residence
JMcC, 2011
All my youthful years, on the way into town from Slingerlands in my parent’s car or by
bicycle, I passed a large white wood frame house on New Scotland Road’s south side,
about a half-mile up the hill from Normans Kill. I never wondered how old it was, who
lived there, or what was its story.
In truth, it has a great story. It was the home and last studio of Asa W. Twitchell, painter
of portraits and landscapes, member of the prestigious “Albany Group” denoted as
sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, Twitchell, George H. Boughton, and Walter Launt Palmer.
The latter was the son of the former, and, like me, an Academy boy. The Albany Group
thrived after the reign of the better known painter, Ezra Ames (1768-1836), although
Erastus Dow Palmer was also unsurpassed in Albany and beyond. 1
I recently realized that Twitchell has a close connection to the Academies. My
predecessors in the writing of Academy history and the care of Academy archives knew
this, but I had the pleasure of peeling away ignorance with the process of investigation
and discovery. I knew the Academies held some of his portraits. The enlightening
moment arrived when I put Twitchell’s portrait of Justice Stephen J. Field into the hands
of conservators at Williamstown Art Conservation Center and learning that they had
others and knew of a portrait he did early-on in the life of one Herman Melville. It was
high time to pull the whole story together.
Twitchell Residence in 1894
Courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art
Asa W. Twitchell, Jr., was born in New Hampshire, January 1, 1820. When he was ten,
his parents settled in Lansingburgh, New York. Asa Senior set up shop as a wheelwright.
Young Asa learned the trade, painted carriages, and attended nearby Lansingburgh
Academy.
Maria Gansevoort married Allan Melville on October 14, 1814, in the North Dutch
Church (First Church, Dutch Reformed) in Albany. Herman Melville was born August 1,
1819 in New York City (though he was baptized in the North Dutch Church). At age
seven, Herman was sent upriver for the summer to his uncle, Judge Peter Gansevoort.
The Melville family returned to Albany in 1830. Herman enrolled in Albany Academy on
October 15, 1830, for English grammar, arithmetic and geography. His brothers Allan
and Gansevoort also attended. His four sisters attended Albany Female Academy. When
his father’s business went bad, Herman was withdrawn. At Allan Sr.’s death in 1832,
Gansevoort Melville left school to run the business in fur hats, capes and coats. Herman
returned to the Academy for one year of Latin study in September, 1836. Then, the Panic
of 1837 killed the Melville enterprise entirely. The family moved to River street in
Lansingburgh in 1838. 2
Herman Melville took engineering and surveying at Lansingburgh Academy. Unable to
find related work with the Erie Canal, he went to sea on the Acushnet, a whaling vessel
out of New Bedford. At the Polynesian harbor of Taio Hae, the ship received natives
bearing gifts, in fact, baring all. Herman jumped ship. The rest is history, or rather
literature. See his first novel, Typee, A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846).
Asa Twitchell was a self-taught artist. He painted his first portrait in 1839 and some of
his first themes were religious. He gravitated toward portraits, emphasizing personality,
character, and revealing in the subject’s face and gaze a characteristic of his or her inner
energy. Twitchell married Nancy Simons of Lansingburgh in 1841. In 1843, they moved
across the river to Albany. Twitchell set up his first studio on Canal street in 1845.
Between 1838 and 1841, Twitchell and Melville were in the village of Lansingburgh
together and some accounts say they met at Lansingburgh Academy and were friends.
Melville had no cause to have a portrait painted before the success of Typee. In 1846-47,
however, that was a fact, and so was an engagement to Elizabeth Shaw of Boston and a
trip for patronage to Washington where Melville met two New York men (courtesy of his
uncle’s introductions): William L. Marcy (former governor and then Secretary of State)
and John T. Dix (then senator, later governor). Upon his return to Lansingburgh, Melville
sat for Twitchell with the following result.
Herman Melville by Asa Twitchell c. 1847
Courtesy Berkshire Athenaeum
Twitchell’s most famous studio was at 57 North Pearl street, above Annesley Art Store.
He was established there in 1874. Annesley’s was a meeting place for artists. It was also
close to Albany Female Academy at nr 40-42 North Pearl. 3 The Academy’s 150th
Anniversary publication indicates Twitchell was a teacher there. Archives has this list of
his paintings.
In 1933, two of Twitchell’s daughters gave the Community United Methodist Church of
Slingerlands their father’s study of “Christ at Twelve” in honor of their sister, Mary
Twitchell Fitch.
“Christ at Twelve” by Asa Twitchell 1882
Photograph by John McClintock
courtesy Community United Methodist Church of Slingerlands
Albany Academy for Girls has three Twitchell paintings; the first two were gifts of the
artist. They are “Self Portrait” (1884, see first page of this paper), “Stephen J. Field”
(1894, see end of paper), and “William L. Learned” (n.d., next page). Judge Learned was
President, Albany Female Academy, 1879-1904, and President, Albany Academy, 19001904. From 1870 to 1891, he was a justice on the New York Supreme Court. Governor
Samuel J. Tilden appointed him Presiding Judge of the Third Department and Governor
Grover Cleveland re-appointed him at the end of that term.
William L. Learned
Archives and Collections of The Albany Academies
The Albany Academy holds two Twitchell paintings: “T. Romeyn Beck” (1893) and
“Martin L. Deyo” (1903). Dr. Beck was one of the greatest men in New York State and
headmaster of Albany Academy (1817-1848). Martin Deyo was an eminently successful
teacher of mathematics and physics at the Academy (1870-1898).
T. Romeyn Beck
Martin Deyo
Archives and Collections of The Albany Academies
Asa Twitchell painted many famous men including nine governors of New York and
seven state Supreme Court justices. Albany Institute of History and Art owns over thirty
Twitchell portraits and landscapes, including “Moses.” 4 His paintings are or have been
exhibited at New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown (“Thurlow Weed”);
New-York Historical Society (“James Fenimore-Cooper” and “Reuben Eaton Fenton”);
National Academy of Design (portrait of James M. Hart, artist of the Hudson River
School, and “River Scene”); Court of Appeals Chamber; Hall of Governors, New York
State Capitol; State Museum (“Lake George”); Albany County Historical Association,
Ten Broeck Mansion, the former home of Thomas W. Olcott and family (“Catherine
Veeder Bullock Lloyd”); and Community United Methodist Church of Slingerlands.
Dr. James H. Armsby, a founder of both the Albany Medical College and Albany
Hospital, was an early patron of Twitchell. In 1886, The Albany Academy hosted the
city’s Bicentennial Exposition. All of the Albany Group were represented. Many artists
connected to the Academies--but not included in this narrative--exhibited. Twitchell’s
contributions were “Portrait of [Charles Loring] Elliott” and “Portrait of the Mother of
John Fred Engel, the Artist.” 5
Asa Twitchell and Erastus Dow Palmer were close friends as well as associates in the
Albany Group. In later years, the two met often at Annesley’s as recorded in this
charming photograph held by the Institute (compare to Twitchell’s self-portrait for the
tell-tale means of identification).
Erastus Dow Palmer and Asa Twitchell in the Gallery at Annesley’s
Courtesy of Albany Institute of History and Art
The two friends died six weeks apart, Palmer in March, Twitchell in April, 1904. This
closed an aesthetic period important to Albany and its Academies. His brush sensitive to
the inner life of his subjects, Asa Twitchell, “a man of singularly beautiful character” 6
still shares with us his prodigious work and appreciation of the character of the men and
women of our city.
Stephen Jay Field by Asa Twitchell 1894
Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln first tenth Justice, United State Supreme Court
Archives and Collections of The Albany Academies
see note 7
[documentary photo taken in 2012 by Williamstown Art Conservation Center]
Notes
1. Albany Academy for Girls owns this lovely tribute to an alumna and teacher, who was
taken too early from her pupils and colleagues, sculpted by Erastus Dow Palmer:
bas relief by Erastus Dow Palmer
Archives and Collections of The Albany Academies
Lucy Plympton reports that George Boughton taught drawing and painting for two years
at Albany Female Academy (Historical Sketch, p. 44).
Walter Launt Palmer entered Albany Academy in 1869. As a painter, he became known
for his Venetian scenes and winter landscapes. His works are in Albany Institute of
History and Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art. He won numerous awards, including a
gold medal at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. See Hun, Ancestry and Hess,
People.
2. I use the nineteenth century convention of capitalizing the street proper name, but not
the type, so, State street, Washington avenue: antiquated, but somehow charming.
3. The 1841-42 Albany City Directory lists the Albany Female Academy on “n. Pearl.”
The 1861 and 1875 issues list the Female academy at 27 or 28 North Pearl. The 1880
Directory has 40 North Pearl in the listings of streets, and 42 in the listings of buildings.
The school building (sans portico) was sold after the move to 155 Washington Avenue.
In the 1894 Directory, W. E. Drislane (Drislane’s), the new occupant, is listed at 38, 40,
42 North Pearl.
4. Of special interest to the Academies are AIHA holdings “Teunis Van Vechten;”
“Huibertje Yates Lansing,” the grandmother of Huybertie Lansing Pruyn Hamlin, author
of the delightful memoir, An Albany Girlhood; “John V. L. Pruyn,” Huibertje’s son and
Huybertie’s father, Academy alumnus (cy 1826), eminent lawyer and a leading citizen of
the state; and “Stephen Van Rensselaer [III],” the last patroon of the manor and the first
president of the Board of Trustees of The Albany Academy. Albany Masonic Temple has
“James Ten Eyck.”
State Library once had Twitchell’s portraits of Governors Marcy and Fenton. There has
been a Fenton at the New-York Historical Society, but the one now in the Hall of
Governors is state property. Twitchell’s Marcy is unaccounted for, but Albany Academy
for Girls has a half-length portrait of Marcy by an unidentified artist. The full-length
portrait of Marcy in the Hall of Governors is by Samuel Waldo. It is on loan from AIHA
(permanent deposit of the City).
The Hunt portrait once listed with the Court of Appeals may be the one now on loan from
AIHA (permanent deposit of the City) to the Hall of Governors. The City of Albany also
had portraits of Hamilton Fish, Horatio Seymour, and Samuel Jones Tilden. I believe all
of these were transferred by the City to Albany Institute in 1971, possibly constituting
these entries in the Institute’s accession records:
On his first day in office, Governor Andrew Cuomo reopened the State Capitol’s Hall of
Governors (closed since 1995). Harold Holzer, Senior Vice President of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and Lincoln scholar, became an advisor to the restoration to the Hall of
Governors. Mark Schaming, New York State Museum, Tammis Kane Groft, Albany
Institute of History and Art, James Jamieson, Capitol Architect, Christine Ward, New
York State Archivist, and Matthew Bender (Albany Academy cy 1949), New York State
Commission on the Restoration of the Capitol, figured prominently in the project. The
portraits painted by Asa Twitchell now exhibited in the Hall of Governors are:
De Witt Clinton (6th governor)
Washington Hunt (17th)
Reuben E. Fenton (22nd)
5. Another Albany exhibition including Twitchell was reported in 1894.
6. Cuyler Reynolds, Albany Chronicles, p. 780.
7. Stephen J. Field graduated valedictorian of the Class of 1837, Williams College. He
taught at Albany Female Academy while reading law in the offices of Harmanus
Bleecker (about 1837 to 1841). He then practiced law with his brother, David Dudley
Field, in New York City and left in 1849 for California in the Gold Rush days. There he
practiced law, was elected to the State Assembly, and became Chief Justice of the
California Supreme Court. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Field an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (to a newly created tenth seat). He served until
1897. Field’s other two brothers were Cyrus, millionaire investor and layer of the
Atlantic Cable, and Henry Martyn, clergyman and writer. One sister was Mary E. Field, a
brilliant AFA student in the class of 1840. Another sister was the mother of Associate
Supreme Court Justice, David J. Brewer. A paper about Field accompanies a grant
proposal for the restoration of Twitchell’s portrait of Field.
Picture Credits
Herman Melville
Image of oil portrait by Asa Twitchell c. 1847
Berkshire Athenaeum
Erastus Dow Palmer (Sculptor) and Asa W. Twitchell (Painter) in Annesley Art Gallery
Photographic reproduction
Albany Institute of History & Art Library, PC19_00140_MPC_285
Mrs. Twitchell and Daughters in front of Twitchell Residence, Albany, N.Y
Unidentified photographer
Albumen print, ht.4 1/2" x w.7 1/2"
Albany Institute of History & Art Library, Gift of Jacquelyn Twitchell_1994.12.2_APC_1_313
Bibliography
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Hamlin, Huybertie Pruyn, An Albany Girlhood, Alice P. Kenney, ed. Albany:
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Hess, Peter J., “Melville / Gansevoort Family” in Friends of Albany Rural Cemetery, vol
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__________, People of Albany During Albany’s Second 200 Years…Albany Rural
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