George Whiting Flagg was a child prodigy, a precocious young talent who by his middle teenage years was a full-fledged professional portrait painter. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, where his father, Henry Collins Flagg III (1790–1863), later served several terms as mayor, Flagg spent most of his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, where his family moved in 1824. Though his parents were initially ambivalent about his early passion for drawing, Flagg won them to his side when his portrait of Bishop John England (1746–1842) of Charleston drew acclaim from the local populace. Flagg’s reward was instruction in painting and drawing from the itinerant portraitist, James Bowman (1793–1842). When Bowman decided to leave Charleston for Boston in the summer of 1831, the fifteen-year-old Flagg went with him.
When Flagg and his family returned to Boston, he sought out the expert tutelage of his uncle, Washington Allston (1779–1843). In 1784, Allston’s mother had married Henry Collins Flagg II (1742–1801), George Whiting Flagg’s grandfather, after Allston’s father died in 1781, thereby joining the two families. Allston was the leading painter in Boston and the foremost history painter in America. He had studied in London with Benjamin West, toured the Continent to study the Old Masters, and enjoyed an award-winning career in London for a number of years before returning to America and settling in Cambridge. Allston took in his eager teenage nephew and taught Flagg the rudiments of painting. Flagg assimilated these valuable lessons from Allston, and set his sights on becoming a history painter. He began to show his works publicly, exhibiting several portraits, genre scenes, and one ideal subject drawn from Walter Scott’s poem “Rokeby,” at the Boston Athenaeum’s annual exhibitions of 1831–33.
After eighteen productive months in Boston painting portraits and ideal subjects, in early 1833 Flagg left for New Haven, where his family had recently relocated from South Carolina. Flagg resumed his work as a portraitist, and increased his devotion to Allstonian ideal and history subjects. In 1834, he had his first canvases accepted by the National Academy of Design, New York, for its annual exhibition that year, showing three works. One of those canvases, Murder of the Princes (1833–34, New-York Historical Society), which depicts a scene from The Tragedy of Richard III, won the approval of critics, who lauded Flagg for his prodigious accomplishments. The painting also drew the attention of Luman Reed, the New York merchant and major collector of contemporary American art. Reed was so taken with this picture, and the promise evinced by the young artist, that he assumed the role of patron, taking Flagg under his wing.
Reed offered Flagg an unprecedented opportunity: a seven-year contract under which Flagg would give Reed his entire output of paintings (with the exception of portrait commissions) in return for a regular salary, rent for a studio, and art supplies. Reed also agreed to send Flagg to Europe to broaden his horizons and realize his potential, with the understanding that Flagg would make copies of various Old Master works for Reed’s collection. Flagg, just eighteen years of age, quickly agreed to Reed’s proposal, and in October 1834 he left for Europe. Flagg spent one month in London before moving on to Paris and then ultimately to Italy, sailing back to the United States after a nine-month stay abroad. Flagg returned to New Haven, where he took portrait commissions and painted history and genre scenes for Reed’s collection. This happy relationship came to a sudden halt upon Reed’s death in 1836. In all, Reed received eleven works from Flagg, all of which, like the rest of Luman Reed’s collection, are now at the New-York Historical Society.
It is fair to say that Flagg’s career was at its peak at the time of Reed’s death, and that without the support of his erstwhile patron, Flagg struggled to attain the heights his career had previously reached. Over the next several decades, Flagg’s career settled into an even rhythm, and he remained one of the few artists committed to painting ideal subjects, history paintings, and dramatic and literary scenes, when he wasn’t busy with portrait commissions. Flagg seems always to have had a keen business sense, for he again attracted a single, crucially important patron, this time the form of James Brewster (1788–1866), the New Haven coach-maker and railroad builder. Brewster had both the interest and the means to acquire precisely the sort of lofty ideal subjects and history paintings that Flagg aspired to paint. Among the works that Brewster is known to have bought from Flagg over the course of the artist’s career are The Landing of the Pilgrims (unlocated), The Laying of the Atlantic Cable (Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford), The Good Samaritan (unlocated), and Washington Receiving his Mother’s Blessing (unlocated), the latter of which was issued as an engraving. Though he faded into obscurity as tastes in art evolved as the century progressed, Flagg remains an important figure in early American history and genre painting, largely due to the collection of his work that Luman Reed amassed.
