Robert Field was a painter of portraits in oil, miniaturist.
Background
He was a native of Great Britain who practiced his profession in the United States and Nova Scotia. According to a Halifax tradition he was born in Gloucestershire, England. This the Thieme and Becker Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kenstler (vol. XI, 1915) states as a fact, but inquiries directed to Gloucester antiquarians have failed to establish it.
Education
Field advertised himself as "late of London, " and it is known that in 1790 he joined the engraving class at the Royal Academy School.
Career
This date is the basis of the birth date tentatively assigned above. His earliest known work was his mezzotint portrait of Rev. Thomas Warton.
He began a residence of fourteen years in the United States, during which Field painted at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Boston.
His engraved portraits of Washington and Hamilton were advertised in the American Minerva and New York Advertiser of April 23, 1795 (Piers, p. 12). The former work appeared, but the latter was never issued (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, A Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibition of Early Engraving in America, 1904, p. 34).
Field is believed by his biographer, Harry Piers, not to have painted the Washington miniature now owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and by them attributed to him.
In 1801, however, he visited Mount Vernon and painted Mrs. Washington from life. His American paintings in oil were unsigned, and some of the Philadelphia "Stuarts" are suspected of being the work of Robert Field. During several years' residence in the capital he painted many celebrities and won social recognition.
In 1805, following the example of Stuart and Malbone, he removed to Boston, then a fast-growing seaport.
At Boston Field made several engravings and a notable miniature of his fellow artist, Henry Sargent. The growing tension between the United States and England may have caused Field, who never had been naturalized, to return to British territory.
In 1808 (not in 1807 as stated in the Boston Museum's Descriptive Catalogue), he set up as a "portrait painter, in oil and water-colours, and in miniature" at Halifax, thus advertising himself in the Royal Gazette, May 30, 1808 (Piers, p. 52).
Nova Scotia at the time was prosperous because of the American Embargo, and Field found much employment. He was befriended by Sir John Wentworth, royal governor, whose portrait he painted (it is now in Government House).
A good singer and conversationalist, he became a social favorite.
His portrait of Sir A. Cochrane, painted in 1810, was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, and of that year was his likeness of the Right Reverend Charles Inglis, bishop of Nova Scotia, now in the British National Portrait Gallery.
By 1815 Field's income from portraiture must have fallen off, for he then opened a book-shop in Water St. , Halifax.
In 1816, evidently seeking new employment, he went to Jamaica where, after presumably indifferent success, he died of yellow fever.
Membership
He was active in Masonry.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Daphne Foskett in A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (1972) wrote that Field was, "one of the best American miniaturists of his time. "
William Dunlap, author of A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (1834), who met Field in Boston, wrote of him: "He was a handsome, stout, gentlemanly man, and a favorite with gentlemen. . I remember two very beautiful female heads by him; one of Mrs. Allen, in Boston, and one of Mrs. Thornton, of Washington" (edition of 1918, II, 119).