Just hanging around
Paintings of Constitution were stored in Woburn; an auction that helped a library sent them home
For decades, the four maritime paintings of Constitution battling Guerriere sat in storage at the Woburn Public Library, where officials didn't know how they got there or what to do with them.
They were vivid, unmistakably old, and probably valuable, but they had no connection to Woburn. So the trustees voted to sell them, thinking the gouaches from 1813 might raise a few thousand dollars each for library renovations.
But bidders at a
The USS Constitution Museum in Boston now owns the paintings by artist George Ropes Jr. of Salem. The works will be centerpieces in a display about the battle, across the Charlestown Navy Yard from where the actual Old Ironsides is docked.
The museum will unveil the paintings during a ceremony that will begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday. Children will act out scenes from the victory over HMS Guerriere, a battle in 1812 that gave Constitution her nickname, captured the public's imagination, and created an enduring legend.
A descendant of Captain Isaac Hull will participate, and a Boston Latin student will read an essay written by an eighth-grader in 1925, the year schoolchildren across the country started a penny campaign to restore the frigate.
Ropes created his paintings while the War of 1812 still raged, and the victorious crew members themselves laid eyes on his work at a Constitution celebration in Salem in 1814, said Sarah Watkins, curator of the museum. She called the paintings iconographic and essential to Constitution's story. That's why the museum coveted them, and others did as well.
"We were in the fight of our lives," said Watkins, who bid on behalf of the museum at the auction in January, following a vote by the trustees to authorize the purchase. After spirited bidding, the price nearly exceeded the amount that the museum's board had approved.
The free private institution, which tries to preserve Constitution's story and keep it relevant, complements the Navy's work as stewards of the nation's oldest commissioned vessel. But it receives no tax funding, so officials at the nonprofit organization were nervous about losing out to wealthier collectors.
"We saw this as our opportunity - maybe our only opportunity ever - to acquire what in essence are eyewitness accounts, there being no photography in 1812," said museum president Burt Logan. Donors agreed, and 134 of them came forward to pledge the money needed for the paintings, he said.
"There was unanimity that the paintings belonged here," Logan said. "So often when items like this go into private hands, they can be out of view to the public for generations."
That was the case in Woburn, where the paintings sat quietly for ages, first in the attic, then in a climate-controlled room. After two appraisals each placed the value of the set between $30,000 and $50,000, library trustees decided to try to sell the works to aid a renovation and expansion project, said Kathleen O'Doherty, Woburn's library director.
The library building, finished in 1879, is a design of Henry Hobson Richardson, who is best known for designing Trinity Church in Boston. Although it's a striking landmark, Woburn's library isn't large enough to serve a community that has tripled in size since its construction, and it lacks many of the necessities of modern facilities, like accessibility for the handicapped, community meeting space, and a dedicated children's room.
Woburn is on the waiting list for state funding to renovate and expand the building, though that probably would have to be offset by more than $10 million in local taxes and private donations, O'Doherty said.
From the auction of the paintings, the library will receive $180,000. O'Doherty, who attended the sale, said she was pleased and relieved to see the Constitution Museum win. "They seem to be really the appropriate venue," she said. "People can actually see them now."
The four paintings depict Constitution and Guerriere sighting each other on rocky seas; the two ships engaged in the fight, with battle sails and colors raised; a demasted Guerriere sending up the plume of smoke to signify its surrender, marking the first victory for the fledgling Navy over the vaunted British; and, finally, Guerriere aflame in a ball of red and orange, after the Constitution crew set fire to the magazine of the unsalvageable ship.
They are not large paintings, at 14 inches by 19 inches, but they are richly detailed, showing Marine sharpshooters on elevated perches and sailcloth pierced by cannonballs.
Ropes, the deaf and mute son of a shipmaster, lived a difficult life and died at 31 of consumption, or tuberculosis, though he produced several paintings later acquired by institutions such as the Peabody Essex Museum and the National Gallery of Art.
He studied under the better-known Michele Felice Corné, an Italian who worked in Salem, and based his Constitution paintings on similar ones by Corné.
But that doesn't make Ropes's works less valuable in this case, said Nancy Druckman, director of the American folk art department at Sotheby's.
They have an appropriate folk charm that is missing from Corné's polished European style, she said.
"The thing that I love about these paintings is the way that the sea is done. There's a wonderful kind of rhythmic curlicue to the water," Druckman said. Artist, subject matter, and period all contributed to the value of the paintings, she said, as did their preserved condition and their original gilt frames, with glass that carries the characteristic ripples of old-fashioned glazing.
The archives at the Woburn library contain no record of the paintings, except for a special report prepared in 1938 by the librarian at the time, William Goddard. He was struck by a radio story about the 126th anniversary of the battle and retrieved the four works from upstairs for reconsideration.
He wrote that he brought them to a local bookshop, thinking they were reproductions: "The young lady in charge very promptly told me they were not prints but opaque watercolors known as gouache, and would be quite valuable if offered for sale, 'running into three figures.' "
They were displayed for a bit, then returned to the attic.
