Robert Feke was an American portrait painter styled a “mariner” in Newport records.
Background
Robert Feke was born at Oyster Bay, Long Island. The family was not Dutch, as has been stated. Robert Feke, Sr. , a Baptist minister, was descended from Robert Feke, or Feake, who settled at Watertown, Massachusetts, and married Elizabeth Fones, widow of Henry Winthrop. The Fekes were of Norfolk, England, a sixteenth-century ancestor being James Feake of Wighton. Little is known of the boyhood of Robert Feke, Jr. His mother was Clemence Ludlam. Several writers repeat the legend that he was disinherited by his Quaker father for adopting the Baptist faith; and that having gone to sea he was taken captive to Spain where he learned to paint. Professor W. C. Poland’s researches established that Robert Feke, Sr. , was himself a Baptist preacher, so that if the story of the disinheritance has any truth, it applies to the father and not to the artist.
Career
Feke’s portraiture has no resemblance to Spanish painting of any period; its affinity to the eighteenth-century English school is obvious. It is probable that Feke had seafaring experience and that this brought him to Newport, a prosperous trading town. In 1729 Dean, afterward Bishop, George Berkeley visited Newport; and from internal evidence in Feke’s painting some have thought that he either learned to paint from John Smibert, who was of Berkeley’s entourage, or that he was influenced at least by Smibert. A tradition records that Mrs. Feke was a Quaker, while her husband remained a Baptist, and that each First- day he escorted her to the door of the Friends’ Meeting-House before going to his own church. William Dunlap’s reference (History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1918, I, 30) to a portrait of a Philadelphia woman, Mrs. Willing, painted in Philadelphia in 1746, has led to discovery of other signed portraits in that city (Hannah R. London, Portraits of Jews by Gilbert Stuart and other Early American Artists, J927, PP- 34> 63, 123). A reference has also been discovered to his painting in Philadelphia in the spring of 1750. Mr. Henry Wilder Foote regards it as certain that in 1741 Feke visited Boston to paint the portrait group of Isaac Royall and family, now belonging to the Harvard Law Library, and again in 1748-49, when he painted more than twenty of his finest pictures, including those of the Bowdoin family. A legendary account which is credible represents Feke as suffering from ill health, a circumstance which led to his going to Bermuda (or possibly Barbados) where he died. Two portraits by Feke, portraying Mary Wanton and Philip Wilkinson, are in the Redwood Library, Newport. The portrait of Rev. John Callender at the Rhode Island Historical Society, in Providence, is now ascribed to Feke, though formerly attributed to Smibert. At Bowdoin College are the very striking likenesses of William and James Bowdoin and their wives. The Cleveland Art Museum has a fine portrait of Charles Apthorp.
Achievements
Of Feke’s technique Lawrence Park wrote (Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum, July 1919) : “The work of his maturity show's Feke to have been a clever draughtsman and although strongly influenced by the conventions of pose which are closely associated with his own and earlier periods, his portraits carry conviction, both as lifelike reproduction of likenesses, and, of the rich, elaborate costumes of velvets, silks and satins which his subjects wore. A pleasing pearliness of tone is found which did not exist when they left the artist’s hands. ”
Personality
Feke was thus described by Dr. Alexander Hamilton, a Scottish visitor, in his Itinerarium: “This man had exactly the phiz of a painter, having a long pale face, sharp nose, large eyes, —with which he looked upon you steadfastly, —long curled black hair, a delicate white hand, and long fingers. ” This description agrees with the two Feke self-portraits: one depicting a youth of about twenty; the other, a mature man as he may have looked about 1750.
Connections
On September 23, 1742, Feke married Elinor Cozzens (in several publications styled “Eleanor. ”)
He left five children of whom only two daughters had descendants.
