Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.
Portrait of Joseph Choate.
[New York?], 1896. Graphite on wove paper, 13.75” x 11.875”. CONDITION: Very good, faint toning and a spot of discoloration at margins, numerous pin-holes to corners, .5” chip to upper-right corner. An original portrait, drawn from life, of leading lawyer, diplomat, and orator Joseph Choate, who helped shape international laws of war, litigated some of the most important American legal cases in the nineteenth century, and became an extremely popular and influential ambassador in the United Kingdom. This bust-length, graphite portrait depicts Joseph Hodges Choate (1832–1917) in his mid-sixties, wearing a suit and tie and looking with steady expression at the viewer. It is signed in pencil in the lower-right corner by Gustave A. Hoffman, with the note: “Joseph Choate…from life 1896.” Choate was born in Salem, Massachusetts to George Choate, a physician, and Margaret Manning (née Hodges) Choate, and after graduating from Harvard College in 1852 and Harvard Law School in 1854, rose rapidly in the legal profession. A particularly captivating and formidable cross-examiner, by 1860 he had become a junior partner in the New York firm of Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, and over the next fifty-five years of his career played an increasingly prominent role in shaping the U.S. legal landscape, arguing against the Chinese Exclusion Act, representing Native Americans in claims of U.S. government treaty violation, fighting prohibition laws in Kansas, and winning a landmark income tax case in the Supreme Court in 1895. Although never interested in running for political office (consenting to do so only once), Choate was an active member of the Republican Party. In the early 1870s he was part of the Committee of Seventy that ousted William “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall. He chaired the American delegation at the Second Hague Conference in 1907, and served as ambassador to the UK between 1899 and 1905, during which time he negotiated full control for the US in the construction and operation of the Panama Canal and promoted the “Open Door” policy on trade with China. In addition to his legal career, Choate was a prominent member of the New York club scene, serving as president of, among others, the Union League Club, the New England Society of New York, the Century Association, the Harvard Club of New York, as well as the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and more. He was also active in cultural and humanitarian spheres, founding and serving as a longtime trustee (among other roles) at the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and holding leadership positions at the New York Hospital, the New York State Charities Aid Association, the New York Association for the Blind, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and more. Choate’s incisiveness, originality, and charisma—combined with his good looks and pleasing voice—made him a compelling figure: according to one colleague, “Whatever the printed brief or the prepared address…the oral presentation was bound to be filled with new ideas, a new point of view, a personal emphasis”; another writer described him as “physically tall, with a relatively large head, plentiful hair, often somewhat tousled, handsome in features, but manly of line and giving an impression of health and physical strength, carefully but not obtrusively dressed, apt to assume careless attitudes, standing with one hand in a trousers’ pocket as he spoke, and with a musical voice of tenor quality, flexible, well-controlled, not loud, but of great carrying power” (DAB). During his final years Choate was a vocal supporter of the Allies and an advocate for the United States’ intervention in World War I, and in 1917 chaired the New York Committee for the reception of the Commissions from England and France: “At the end of an arduous week, after the closing exercises at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, he said to Mr. Balfour, ‘Remember, we meet again to celebrate the victory.’ The next day he died” (DAB). Gustave Adolph Hoffman (1869–1945) was born in Cottbus, Germany, and after studying in Munich with American-born artist Carl von Marr ( 1858–1936) immigrated to the U.S. in about 1890. He settled in Rockville, Connecticut, where he worked as an etcher and portrait painter. His work is held in museums across Germany, as well as the British Museum, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and numerous locations in New York and Connecticut. A dignified graphite portrait of this revered American lawyer and statesman. REFERENCES: “Choate, Joseph Hodges,” Dictionary of American Biography; Merrill, Peter C. Germany Immigrant Artists in America: A Biographical Dictionary (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1997), p. 107.
Item #7909
Price: $1,250.00
Add to Wish List