A Leader Ahead Of His Times (June 1963 | Volume: 14, Issue: 4)

A Leader Ahead Of His Times

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Authors: Louis C. Jones

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June 1963 | Volume 14, Issue 4

At first glance, the portrait at the left seems hardly unusual—hundreds of the same sort were painted by the largely self-trained artists who roamed the country in the days before the camera was invented. But the subject is a Negro, and from all indications of dress, an unusually prosperous onesomething of an oddity, for the portrait apparently dates from the 1830’s, a full quarter-century before the Emancipation Proclamation. Who was the man holding the book with the initials “W.W.”?

Of the origins of the painting, nothing can be said for certain. Stylistic and chronological evidence suggests that it is the work of William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) of Boston, a mass-production artist who advertised likenesses “without shade or shadow” for as little as 82.92 (today they bring $500 or more). Too, Prior was a confirmed abolitionist and is known to have done several portraits of Negroes.

A century after it was painted, the portrait with the enigmatic initials was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. William J. Gunn, a well-to-do couple from West Newton, Massachusetts, who collected folk art voraciously —but, as far as anyone can gather, merely for the fun of accumulating canvases. According to one Boston dealer who knew them slightly, they tended to act anonymously, dropping quietly into a shop, buying what they liked with cash, and sending a servant to pick up their purchase the next day.

Oddly enough, though the Gunns amassed more than six hundred examples of folk art over a period of some twenty-five years, they never did anything with their collection. When Mrs. Gunn—who had outlived her husband—died in 1958, all but three of the paintings were found stored hapha/ardly in the barn behind the house. Some had been taken out of their frames, and a fair number cut oft their stretchers; many were splattered by barn paint and the droppings of birds and bats. One hundred and eight) paintings from this neglected trove were acquired by the New York State Historical Association; among them was the portrait of the unknown Negro gentleman, “W.W.”

The mystery of his identity was eventually cleared up when I showed a photograph of the canvas to my friend Sterling Brown, professor of English at Howard University. He and some of his associates suggested that “W.W.” might be a seldom-mentioned and longforgotten figure of the abolitionist movement, William Whipper. Afore than that, they knew his grandson, Leigh Whipper, the former president of the Negro Actors Guild, who is still alive in New York. Leigh Whipper confirmed their surmise. It was a family tradition, he said, that everything his grandfather owned was initialed “W.W.”; moreover, he remembered that William Whipper wore on his watch chain a miniature saw exactly like the one in the painting.

The details of William Whipper’s life are ha/y at best; and yet from the few scraps of information that do exist, it is apparent that he was not only a