Charles Callahan Perkins
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Charles Callahan Perkins (March 1, 1823 - August 25, 1886), art critic, author and organizer of cultural activities, had from his parents, James and Eliza Greene (Callahan) Perkins, both the material inheritance and the temperament that naturally made him an influential friend of the arts of design and of music in Boston, his native city.
The father, descended from Edmund Perkins who emigrated to New England in 1650, was a wealthy and philanthropic merchant; the mother was a gracious, cultivated woman. From the family home in Pearl Street Charles attended several schools before entering Harvard College. The prescribed academic course he found irksome, but he was graduated in 1843. He had previously drawn and painted and, declining chances to enter business, he went abroad soon after graduation, determined to study art. At Rome he became friendly with the sculptor Thomas Crawford, then struggling against poverty, and gave him encouragement. In 1846 he took a studio at Paris, where he had instruction from Ary Scheffer. Later he was at Leipzig, pursuing studies in the history of Christian art. During a second residence at Paris he took up etching with Bracquemond and Lalanne. He made many etchings to illustrate his own books.
Circumstances led Perkins, a wealthy man, to devote his life to interpreting the art of others rather than to creative art. His love of music competed with his enthusiasm for painting and sculpture. In 1850-51 and from 1875 until his death he was president of the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston, whose concerts he sometimes conducted and for which he wrote meritorious music. He married, June 12, 1855, Frances Davenport Bruen, daughter of the Rev. Matthias Bruen, of New York. At their home many concerts and recitals were given. Perkins was the largest subscriber toward the Boston Music Hall, to which he also contributed the great bronze statue of Beethoven, modeled by his friend Crawford--the work which since 1902 has stood in the entrance hall of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston. An invitation extended to Perkins in 1857 to give some lectures at Trinity College, Hartford, on "The Rise and Progress of Painting," started him as a lecturer. He possessed charm and magnetism on the platform.
After a second period of European residence, ending in 1869, he lectured frequently on Greek and Roman art before Boston school teachers, and at the Lowell Institute on sculpture and painting. Thirteen years' service on the Boston school committee amplified his educational work. He brought to Boston the South Kensington methods of teaching drawing and design to children, and he was instrumental in founding the Massachusetts Normal Art School, now the Massachusetts School of Art. As a committeeman he was also assigned the third division of the school system, comprising the North and West Ends. He took pains to know personally all teachers of his division, often entertaining them at his home.
Prior to 1850 Perkins had proposed an art museum for Boston but had found the plan premature. When others twenty years later revived this project he supported it gladly. He was second among the incorporaters of the present Museum of Fine Arts, securing for its opening a gift of Egyptian antiquities and making valuable suggestions as to arrangement of exhibits. Among the directors he advocated showing contemporary work as well as the arts of antiquity. He had, meantime, been elected to the presidency of the Boston Art Club, which he held for ten years, and to which he gave much time. He systematically devoted part of each day to writing. Tuscan Sculptors, published in London in 1864, brought him a European reputation. It was followed in 1868 by Italian Sculptors, with illustrations drawn and etched by the author. He edited, with notes, Charles Locke Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste (1872), Art in Education (1870), Art in the House (1879) from the original of Jakob von Falke, and Sepulchral Monuments in Italy (1885).
In 1878 he brought out, with illustrative woodcuts which he had designed, Raphael and Michaelangelo, dedicated to Henry W. Longfellow, whose previously unpublished translations of the sculptor's sonnets were included in the book. His Historical Handbook of Italian Sculpture appeared in 1883, and in 1886, in French, Ghiberti et Son École. At the time of his death he had nearly finished his closely documented History of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Massachusetts, which other hands completed. He was also critical editor of the Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, edited by Champlin. [1] He liked society and good fellowship.
He was the great-grandfather of Archibald Cox, who's mother Frances Bruen Perkins was the daughter of Edward Clifford Perkins and Elizabeth Hoar Evarts. Elizabeth was the daughter of US Attorney General, Secretary of State and Senator William Maxwell Evarts. Perkins died in Windsor, Vermont in a carriage accident which he driving with Senator Evarts.
He was the great nephew of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, who founded the Perkins shipping empire J. & T.H Perkins with Charles' grandfather James.
[edit] Further reading
[There are tributes to Perkins by Robert C. Winthrop, Thomas W. Higginson and Samuel Eliot, with a biography by the last-named, in the Proc. Massachusetts Historical Society, 2 ser. III (1888). See also: Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston, vol. IV (1881); A. F. Perkins, Perkins Family (1890); Dwight's Journal of Music, March 1, 1856; and Boston Transcript, Aug. 26, 1886.]
[edit] Source Citations
"Charles Callahan Perkins."Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.
