Joseph Brant (1742-1807)

Date1806

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsSight: 29 × 23 1/4 in. (73.7 × 59.1 cm)

Object numberN0421.1955

Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Gift of Stephen C. Clark

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextThayendanegea (also called Joseph Brant), born in Ohio in 1742, was a protégé of Sir William Johnson who married, by Native custom, Brant's sister Molly Brant. Brant received an English education at Moor's Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, from Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, later President of Dartmouth College. A courageous and capable military leader, Thayendanegea rose to high authority in the Iroquois Confederacy, becoming known as "The Father of Six Nations." He was a leader of Haudenosaunee forces in the warfare of the New York frontier, the area surrounding present-day Cooperstown. Brant, who was also a Colonel in the British Army, was visiting General Pierre Van Cortland (who used to trade with the Indians) and sat for this Ames portrait. Brant had declined to be painted in street clothes, therefore a cotton shirt with a floral patter first had to be sewn for him. When the portrait was finished, Brant took off his sash, hung it over the picture, and said he wanted it to hang there always.
Exhibition History“This New Man,” National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., September 28 – December 31, 1968.

“People of Great Peace,” Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY, October 23, 1981 – September 2, 1983.

“Faces of the City, Public and Private: Albany Portraits from 3 Centuries,” University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, September 2 – October 19, 1986.

“Clash of Empires: The British, French & Indian War, 1754-1763,” Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, Pittsburgh, PA, May 1, 2005 – April 15, 2006; Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Canada, May 15, 2006 – November 1, 2006. Smithsonian Institution, International Gallery, Washington, D.C., December 15, 2006 – July 15, 2007.

“On the Trails of the Iroquois,” Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundersrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany, February 23 – September 4, 2013; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany, October 18, 2013 – January 6, 2014.
Bibliography“Lyman Draper Papers,” in American Historical Record (July 1873), p. 318.

Roseberry, C. R., “Biography Reviews Interest in Ezra Ames, Albany Artist Won Fame for Portraits of Many Notables,” in The Times Union (Sunday April 17, 1955), p. E1, E4, ill.

Thompson, J. R. Fawcett, “Thayendanegeea the Mohawk and his several portraits, How the ‘Captain of the Six Nations’ came to London and sat for Romney and Stuart,” in The Connoisseur (January, 1969), pp. 49-53.

Liddle, Nancy, The Faces of the City: Albany Portraits from Three Centuries (exh. cat. Albany, NY: University Art Gallery of the University at Albany, 1986), p. 52, cat no. 4.

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