Background
John Elliott was was born in Lincolnshire, England, of a noted Border family with which Robert Louis Stevenson was connected.
John Elliott was was born in Lincolnshire, England, of a noted Border family with which Robert Louis Stevenson was connected.
Then at Julien’s Academy he spent a profitable year with Carolus Duran, followed by further study in Rome at the San Lucca Academy and in the studio of Don José di Villegas, whom he greatly admired.
He gave early promise of artistic talent.
The Italian atmosphere inspired “The Vintage, ” one of Elliott’s most beautiful works, exuberant with the spirit of youth, brilliant and richly decorative.
He returned to Lake Erie in August and took command of the Niagara as the ranking officer under Perry, and in this capacity had an important part in the battle of Lake Erie, September, 1813.
Soon thereafter Elliott’s precise conduct during the battle was disputed and a controversy arose which raged in and out of the navy for more than thirty years and is without a parallel in American naval history.
For upwards of three hours during the battle the Niagara was not brought into close action.
She rendered Perry relatively little assistance while his flagship was being shot to pieces and made to suffer more than two-thirds of the entire American loss.
Elliott’s defenders were under the necessity of explaining and justifying his lack of action.
The state legislature of Pennsylvania voted Elliott a medal for his gallantry.
In 1818 the controversy resulted in Elliott’s challenging Perry to a duel and in Perry’s preferring charges against Elliott, requesting that he be court-martialed.
On the publication in 1839 of James Fenimore Cooper’s History of the Navy containing an account of the battle of Lake Erie which was regarded as favorable to Elliott by Perry’s friends, the controversy broke out anew and each side presented its case in books, pamphlets, and newspapers.
In 1843 Cooper published a reply to Perry’s protagonists, which is quite the ablest defence of Elliott, who, greatly pleased, caused a silver medal, bearing an image of his defender, to be made and widely distributed.
The Rhode Island Historical Society declined to receive one of the medals and the Rhode Island legislature also showed its partiality for Perry, a native of that state.
Admiral Mahan, who considered the circumstances of the battle at length, reached conclusions favorable to Perry, holding that when that officer brought his ship into close action “he was entitled to expect prompt imitation by the Niagara” (post, p. 98).
In 1815-16 Elliott commanded the sloop Ontario and participated in the war with Algiers.
In 1818 he was promoted to a captaincy and from that year until 1822 was a member of a commission appointed to select permanent sites for navy-yards and fortifications.
While on the coast of Brazil in command of the Cyane, 1825-27, he was offered the post of admiral in the ral, ordered by Mrs. Potter Palmer for the dining-room at her home on Lake Shore Drive, in Chicago, was the forerunner of other examples of Elliott’s work prized in some of the best houses there.
Others of note include Lord Ava, son of Lord Dufferin, Marquis of Winchester; General Wauchope; Lady Katherine Thynne, afterwards Lady Cromer; Samuel Ward; Samuel Gridley Howe; and Julia Ward Howe.
In 1894 Elliott returned to Rome, commissioned to execute a mural, “The Triumph of Time, ” to be placed in the Boston Public Library.
It is notable as the first gift, by private citizens, of mural art for a public building in the nation’s capital.
They resided for many years in Boston, then moved to Newport, R. I, where Elliott became one of the founders of the Newport Art Association. Declining health, in the months previous to his death, took him, with his wife, to Charleston, South Carlina, where he died May 26, 1925.
He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass.
A modernist’s conception of the scientific spirit of the age, he expressed in harmonious imagery the heritage of classic times, and portrayed with much imaginative treatment natural forces, emotions, and primal passions as conceived by the ancients.
Elliott became one of the founders of the Newport Art Association
On Febuary 7, 1887, John Elliott married Maud Howe, daughter of the distinguished Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Gridley Howe.