Quaker History

Rhoda Steddon MoteMarcus Mote (Self-portrait) Wife of the painter.Miniature on ivory. Ca. 1850. TURTLE CREEK TRAVELER A CHAPTER FROM THE LIFE OF MARCUS MOTE, ARTIST By Opal Thornburg* Marcus Mote (1817-1898), reputed to be one of the best portrait painters of his period in Ohio and Indiana, was the son of David and Miriam Mendenhall Mote, leading Friends of West Branch Monthly Meeting, West Milton, Ohio. Genealogical records show that Marcus Mote was distantly related to Benjamin West, in that a grandfather of West, Thomas Pearson, was Mote's direct ancestor six generations back. Though Benjamin West was born in 1738, seventy-nine years before the birth of Marcus Mote, because of the earlier settlement of Pennsylvania, each was born under pioneer conditions. There are interesting parallels in the lives of the two artists. Both were of Quaker families and met the opposition of the Quakers to art. At six Benjamin attempted to draw a portrait of his sister's baby; at three Marcus sketched his father's likeness in charcoal. The sources of their early colors were the same—indigo from the laundry tub, bloodroot and yellowroot from the woods. Cat's fur supplied Benjamin's brushes, while Marcus used squirrel tails. Each received at an early age the gift of a box of water colors. Each drew on the Bible for many of his themes, and each insisted on simplicity and fidelity to the truth. Because of this last quality, when Benjamin West painted his conception of the death of General Wolfe after the capture of Quebec, he refused to represent his characters in Greek or Roman costume, according to the prevailing manner, but showed them in the dress of their time, saying, "The subject I have to represent is a great battle fought and won and the same truth which gives law to the historian should rule the painter. ... I want to mark the time, the place, and the people, and to do this I must abide by truth."1 * Opal Thornburg is Archivist and College Historian of Earlham College. She has made a special study of the career of Marcus Mote. 1 Samuel Isham, The History of American Painting (New York, 1927), p. 51. 35 36Quaker History Similarly, when Marcus Mote painted his picture of "Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1844,"2 he included an outdoor toilet and a stray hog. When an objection was raised he replied, "They were there, so I had to paint them." A comparison of the ways in which Benjamin West, Edward Hicks, and Marcus Mote met the conflict between their devotion to art and the Quaker opposition to their practice of it shows that West simply went his own way as an artist without reference to Friends, though conditioned by his early religious training in his choice of theme and in his manner of portraying it. Hicks, on the other hand, tried to conform to what might be acceptable to Friends. Though he did not put it into words, he may have believed that his art, as untaught expression, was akin to the Quaker insistence on "speaking as the Spirit moves," contrasted to fine art growing out of instruction and related to patterns or fashions. Marcus Mote was both Friend and artist, maintaining his status in each sphere without apology or concession, patiently trying to bring the two together, not by argument but simply by finding room for both in his own life. It is probable that Marcus knew little, before the height of his own career, about the work of Benjamin West, who spent most of his productive life in England. The fact that at age twenty Marcus was painting miniatures in water color on ivory indicates that he may have known something of the work of the master painter of American miniatures, Edward Greene Malbone, his senior by forty years, and of the miniature painting by some of the Cincinnati artists, seventy miles from his home near West Milton. Supplies for artists were available in Cincinnati, to which Marcus could send an order by any farmer taking his hogs to market. By the time he turned seriously to portraiture, the miniature was losing its popularity and...