Philip Thomas Coke Tilyard, Baltimore portraitist
Date
1980
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Philip Thomas Coke Tilyard's Huguenot ancestors settled in Norwich, England, following the French religious persecutions of the 1680s. Nearly one hundred years later, in 1773, the artist's father William disembarked at Baltimore. That burgeoning city with its active harbor and large Methodist population must have attracted the young Methodist, who had been raised in a river-port town. During Philip's youth the family resided on Water Street in the heart of Baltimore Town. ☐ Philip (1758-1830) was William and Mary Tilyard*s first child to survive infancy. Born on January 10, 1785, just after the famous Methodist Christmas Conference, he was named in honor of the visiting English presbyter Bishop Thomas Coke. The boy grew up under fundamentalist doctrines and learned the trade of house and sign painting from his father. As a youth, Tilyard showed a passion for drawing. Pursuing this interest, he attended an art academy which advertised lessons in sign and ornamental painting as well as landscape and portrait painting. ☐ After his father's death in 1806, Philip was listed in the Baltimore city directories as a painter and glazier, or sign and ornamental painter. During the next several years, he received technical advice from Thomas Sully, the renowned Romantic painter, and gained the patronage of noted collector and connoisseur Robert Gilmor, Using his mentors’ guidance, Tilyard began to paint subjects by copying the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century masters and by reading eighteenth-century art theory. Sir Joshua Reynolds, St, Cecilia, Mary Tilyard, Landscape with Cottage, and Landscape with Castle were the results of his early endeavors. ☐ Following his service in the War of 1812, Philip first advertised himself as a portrait painter. At this time the aspiring artist lived and worked just around the corner from Rembrandt Peale*s new Baltimore Museum, Surely, he sought Peale*s advice, or at least, used the museum’s resources for study. His first professional portraits are documented by the admirable likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. William Baker, Sr. ☐ For a brief period in 1816 and 1817, the native Baltimorean operated a dry goods store. In the latter year, Tilyard married a local china merchant’s daughter Martha Moule, who bore him five children. After the bankruptcy of his merchant business, Philip returned to his former profession. ☐ The portrait of Dr. Arthur Pue, painted in 1820, clearly establishes the beginning of Tilyard*s mature style. His was a somewhat conservative Romantic style, with less flourish than his mentor Sully, but more fluency than the fastidious Rembrandt Peale, similar to his contemporaries John Wesley Jarvis and Charles Bird King. ☐ Tilyard*s portraits of the 1820s confirm his high technical and stylistic achievements. The four portraits of Mr. and Mrs. George Washington Waring, Mrs. John Cockey m , and her son Dr. John Paul Cockey exhibit his skill in portraying individual expressiveness a key to the Romantic portraiture of mood. His Charles Slade Tilyard, John Pendleton Kennedy, and Colonel Samuel Coleman illustrate the success with which he depicted the human face at all ages. Other likenesses executed during the decade promote Tilyard’s s technical capabilities and demonstrate the diversity of his commissions. Philip*s three self-portraits offer further insight into his proficiency as an artist and interpret his personality: pleasant, content, self-confident. ☐ Beyond his paintings, supplementary documents, such as Tilyard*s day book, letters, Robert Gilmor*s diary, exhibition catalogues, city directories, and records of his fees, amplify the success of this Baltimorean's art career. In addition, they place Tilyard within the context of his environment and provide an understanding about the state of the arts in early nineteenth-century Baltimore.