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Old Ironsides

Portraits of well-known men were the first category of paintings done in the American colonies; but not far behind these depictions came portraits of ships. At first they were usually single vessels done for their owners, but by the time of the War of 1812 the fledgling United States Navy consisted of a few warships, and an interest in scenes of American sea battles was born. This was not a popular war, but even those who opposed it regarded the extraordinary defeat by the United States built and manned frigate Constitution over the British frigate Guerriere on August 19, 1812, as a major triumph; both the ship and its captain were widely lauded.

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Only a month earlier, on July 17, the Constitution's commander; Captain Isaac Hull, had encountered seven British warships, including the Guerriere, five days out at sea. In a strong test of seamanship the officers and crew of the Constitution managed to outrun these vessels in a sixty-hour chase. Hampered by a lack of wind, the crew spent hours kedge hauling. The Constitution's next meeting with the Guerriere took place almost six hundred miles off the Massachusetts coast. It was the first important engagement of the war, but what was more important at the time was that the victory served to raise American morale. Eyewitness reports were published in many newspapers, and not long afterward artists began to present various scenes of the battle to eager audiences (these came to include a panorama, engravings, transfer-printed images on earthenware, and decorations on clocks). Indeed the subject persisted as a popular theme for decades, especially following the rescue of the ship from being scrapped as unseaworthy in 1830--a feat often attributed to the inspiring poem "Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which was originally published in the Boston Daily Advertiser.

The first depictions of the battle were executed by the Italian American painter Michele Felice Corne, who, it is said, received his information on the battle directly from Hull when the captain reached shore a month later. Corne was the mentor in Salem, Massachusetts, of a young deaf mute painter named George Ropes, the artist of the ...