Jacob Eichholtz (1776–1842): A Pennsylvania Pioneer of Romantic Portraiture

Jacob Eichholtz (1776–1842) inhabited several worlds, or so his letter to fellow artist and historian of early American art, William Dunlap would suggest. Trained as an artisan, he successfully entered the world of fine art (Fig. 1). Born and raised in the small town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he was most at home in cosmopolitan Philadelphia. His is an American story and his success at navigating a path through his rapidly changing worlds brings America’s past into sharper relief. Eichholtz began his career as a sign painter and a coppersmith. After several years making such things as copper teakettles and entryway signs, he ventured into portraiture in 1801. When noted portraitist Thomas Sully came to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to paint its leading citizens, Eichholtz gave the artist his “painting room” to use as a studio. Sully took Eichholtz under his wing, giving him painting supplies and offering advice. Eichholtz later wrote that “Chance about this time threw a painter into the town of my residence. This in a moment decided my fate as to the arts.” He painted mainly in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Rindge, “Jacob Eichholtz: 1776-1842,” in Kelly et al., *American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century*, vol. I, 1996) He married Catharine Hatz michael (1770–1817), a young widow with two children; they had four children of their own, caroline, catharine maria, rubens mayer, and margaret amelia. In 1818, he married catharine trissler of lancaster, and they had nine children, edward, anna maria, elizabeth susanna, benjamin west, angelica kauffman, rebecca, henry, robert lindsay, and lavallyn barry. Eichholtz’s parents, Leonard and Catherine, were second-generation Pennsylvania Germans who had achieved a high degree of commercial and social success as tavern keepers in their native town of Lancaster. At age 11, Eichholtz attended the english school at franklin college in lancaster where he learned the three rs — reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic. Though trained as a coppersmith, Eichholtz was determined from an early age to be an artist. In a letter to William Dunlap he wrote: “At the proper time I was put apprentice to a coppersmith, (a wretched contrast with a picture maker), when still my predilection for drawing showed itself in the rude sketches of my fellow apprentices pictured on the walls of the shop with a charcoal.” During the winter of 1811–1812, Eichholtz traveled to boston where he spent several weeks at the studio of gilbert stuart copying his works under stuart’s supervision. Stuart encouraged Eichholtz to continue painting. In 1808, James Peale visited lancaster from philadelphia and captured on canvas a reflective and confident Jacob Eichholtz at age 32 (Fig. 3). This is a portrait of youthful success and leisure, with no specific references to his business in copper and tin. Perhaps this is because Eichholtz saw himself as an entrepreneur, having already expanded beyond his craft. According to his daybook, at this point, he was providing services as a gilder, glazier, wholesaler in raw materials, an occasional retailer of glass and china, and, ever increasingly, a painter—of banners, fire buckets, Masonic aprons, signs, and musical instruments (see top of page 194). He was exhibiting with the society of artists at the pennsylvania academy of the fine arts. Eichholtz relocated back to lancaster in 1830 where he died in 1842. He and his family were originally interred at holy trinity lutheran church on south duke street in lancaster, pennsylvania. In the early 1850s, holy trinity church sought to expand its churchyard, so the church relocated the majority of gravestones and the remains to the new woodward hill cemetery, lot 33 of area b, including the remains of eichholtz and his family. Eichholtz’s gravestone, which was made of marble, had deteriorated due to age and acid rain, rendering the inscription illegible. Local historians have called for the restoration of his headstone, as well as the installation of a brass plaque at the grave site to mark his achievements. For decades the artistic legacy of jacob eichholtz was overlooked. As time passed, a reassessment of the significance of his achievements took place and “his portraits of thaddeus stevens and james buchanan are generally accepted as the best that were done of these statesmen.” More...