{"id":1365,"date":"2022-12-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2023-10-12T15:40:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T15:40:11","slug":"in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/","title":{"rendered":"Work of the Week: William Williams’ “The (William) Denning Family” | In the Spirit of Conversation, a Confession\u00a0by Dr. Grant Hamming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Installation Views<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

William Williams (American, 1727-1791) The (William) Denning Family<\/em>, 1772, Oil on canvas, 35 \u00bd x 52 inches <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin West (American, 1738-1820), Mrs. Thomas Keyes and Her Daughter<\/em>, c. 1806, Oil on panel, 33 x 23 \u00bc inches <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A term one sometimes hears used when discussing eighteenth-century Anglosphere (basically, Britain and its various colonies) art is \u201cconversation piece.\u201d When I started in my Ph.D. program in 2010, I do not believe I had heard it before; if I had, I certainly didn\u2019t give it much thought. Conversation pieces\u2014the precise definition of which I\u2019ll get to in a minute\u2014are a type of portraiture, and I am moderately ashamed to admit that I didn\u2019t much care about portraiture earlier in my career. I fancied myself a budding expert in printmaking and other arts aimed at popular audiences (my master\u2019s thesis was on the lithography firm Currier and Ives), and self-indulgent depictions of wealthy elites failed to move the needle for me. As I have<\/a> written before<\/a> in this space, my work as the American Art Research Fellow has given me the opportunity to reevaluate my preconceived notions and to challenge what I think I know about American art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rollins Museum of Art is quite strong in American portraiture\u2014and not just dog portraiture!<\/a> You may remember, in fact, that the very first entry in this series<\/a> was about Gilbert Stuart, one of the most well-known American portrait painters of the Early Republican period. With the arrival of the Andersen Collection this area of strength gets even stronger. Two of the most exciting new additions are group portraits by Benjamin West and William Williams. West you have likely heard of. He was one of the first Americans to make his name in the London art world, securing the patronage of King George III and becoming the second president of the Royal Academy. Williams, however, is more obscure. Born in Bristol, he spent some time as a sailor before ending up in Philadelphia, where he advertised his services as a painter. It was there that he met the young Benjamin West, who had recently moved from rural Pennsylvania to the city. Though only eleven years West\u2019s senior, Williams became his first mentor, sharing with the younger man not only his knowledge of painting, but his library of prints and art books, both invaluable commodities in the then relatively unsophisticated American colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

West would go on to a remarkable career, while Williams remained a workaday painter in what was then a backwater. The two paintings, however, share much in common. In both, the figures regard the viewer, swathed in late-eighteenth-century finery and surrounded by evidence of material comfort. The works, however, belong to two slightly different but related portrait traditions. West\u2019s is a relatively small-scale example of the Grand Manner portrait style, in which sitters are arrayed in their finery, surrounded by studio props and idealized landscapes. The goal is to emphasize their refinement and good taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work by Williams, on the other hand, is a conversation piece. This is where the confession in the title comes in. I encountered the term here and there\u2014you can hardly avoid it when studying the history of American art\u2014but I never thought about it too hard. If you had asked me, I would have probably said conversation pieces were meant to prompt conversation among their erudite Enlightenment-era viewers. My disinterest in portraiture kept me from thinking about it too hard, to be honest. Of course, I would have had it exactly backwards: conversation pieces depict<\/em> conversations, not prompt them (though they may do both, of course). In contrast with the formality of the Grand Manner, they are intended to show sitters in a more relaxed and natural state, interacting with one another and their environment. They are characterized by the attention to detail not just in depicting the sitters, but also their environment. Though it\u2019s somewhat hard to believe from the vantage of our more casual era, that\u2019s just what Williams is doing in The (William) Denning Family<\/em>. Denning and his daughter form one group, while his wife, son, and dog form another. Interestingly, they are shown not in the idealized space of the Grand Manner, but in their actual garden, specifically in the family house Wall Street in Manhattan. I\u2019m very grateful to have spent some time with this work, renewing and refining my familiarity with that quintessential eighteenth-century art form: the conversation piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grant Hamming, Ph.D.
American Art Research Fellow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read more on these works by William Williams, visit our Collection page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Williams (American, 1727-1791) The (William) Denning Family, 1772, Oil on canvas, 35 \u00bd x 52 inches  Benjamin West (American, 1738-1820), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,130],"tags":[230,143,133,229,29,228],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-work-of-the-week","tag-18th-century","tag-dr-grant-hamming","tag-permanent-collection","tag-portraiture","tag-rollins-college","tag-william-williams"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nWork of the Week: William Williams' "The (William) Denning Family" | In the Spirit of Conversation, a Confession\u00a0by Dr. Grant Hamming - Rollins Museum of Art<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A term one sometimes hears used when discussing eighteenth-century Anglosphere (basically, Britain and its various colonies) art is \u201cconversation piece.\u201d When I started in my Ph.D. program in 2010, I do not believe I had heard it before; if I had, I certainly didn\u2019t give it much thought. 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As I have written before in this space, my work as the American Art Research Fellow has given me the opportunity to reevaluate my preconceived notions and to challenge what I think I know about American art.","twitter_image":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/williams-denning-family-L-10-1995-lme-w-out-frame-scaled.jpg","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Grant Hamming, American Art Research Fellow, CFAM","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/"},"author":{"name":"Grant Hamming, American Art Research Fellow, CFAM","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/#\/schema\/person\/8986446cf0119abe5d81bad9e8d3a513"},"headline":"Work of the Week: William Williams’ “The (William) Denning Family” | In the Spirit of Conversation, a Confession\u00a0by Dr. Grant Hamming","datePublished":"2022-12-19T08:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2023-10-12T15:40:11+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/"},"wordCount":792,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/williams-denning-family-L-10-1995-lme-w-out-frame-scaled.jpg","keywords":["18th century","Dr. Grant Hamming","Permanent Collection","Portraiture","Rollins College","William Williams"],"articleSection":["Blog","Work of the Week"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/","url":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/","name":"Work of the Week: William Williams' \"The (William) Denning Family\" | In the Spirit of Conversation, a Confession\u00a0by Dr. Grant Hamming - Rollins Museum of Art","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/williams-denning-family-L-10-1995-lme-w-out-frame-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2022-12-19T08:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2023-10-12T15:40:11+00:00","description":"A term one sometimes hears used when discussing eighteenth-century Anglosphere (basically, Britain and its various colonies) art is \u201cconversation piece.\u201d When I started in my Ph.D. program in 2010, I do not believe I had heard it before; if I had, I certainly didn\u2019t give it much thought. Conversation pieces\u2014the precise definition of which I\u2019ll get to in a minute\u2014are a type of portraiture, and I am moderately ashamed to admit that I didn\u2019t much care about portraiture earlier in my career. I fancied myself a budding expert in printmaking and other arts aimed at popular audiences (my master\u2019s thesis was on the lithography firm Currier and Ives), and self-indulgent depictions of wealthy elites failed to move the needle for me. As I have written before in this space, my work as the American Art Research Fellow has given me the opportunity to reevaluate my preconceived notions and to challenge what I think I know about American art.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/2022\/12\/19\/in-the-spirit-of-conversation-a-confession\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/williams-denning-family-L-10-1995-lme-w-out-frame-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/rma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/williams-denning-family-L-10-1995-lme-w-out-frame-scaled.jpg","width":2560,"height":1749,"caption":"William Williams (American, 1727-1791) The William Denning Family, 1772 Oil on canvas 40 \u00be x 57 in. 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