\"Elihu Yale at Yale.\" Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (December 2012): 52-65

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Elihu Yale at YaleAuthor(s): ROMITA RAYSource: Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, , Elihu Yale (2012), pp. 52-65Published by: Yale University, acting through the Yale University Art GalleryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23344757 .

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Elihu Yale

ROMITA RAY

On March 16, 1960, President Dwight D.

Eisenhower penned a letter to Yale University

President Alfred Whitney Griswold, offering

to donate a portrait of Elihu Yale (fig. 1) to the

college. Painted by an unknown eighteenth

century artist, the work presents a sober

image of a wealthy East India Company mer

chant whose quiet opulence of dress under

scores his lucrative Indian career. Eisenhower

had received the painting from Jawaharlal

Nehru during his trip to India the previous

December. "I understand my suggestion

meets with the approval, even the desire, of

Prime Minister Nehru," he noted, hinting

that Nehru had discreetly sanctioned, if not

facilitated, this transfer to New Haven, Con

necticut.1 This is the only picture among

Yale's known portraits to have been displayed

at Fort Saint George in Madras (present-day

Chennai), although it is unclear when exactly

it was deposited there.2

Like several other portraits of Elihu Yale,

this image registers the growing scope of

England's transoceanic engagements long

before the Company Raj was cemented, and

certainly well before the Victorian Raj had

crystallized.' Not only is Yale represented as a

Fig. i. Unknown artist, Elihu Yale, i8th century. Oil on

canvas, 36lA x 28% x iVs in. (92.1 x 72.1 x 2.9 cm). Yale

University Art Gallery, Gift of President Dwight D.

Eisenhower, 1960.17

dignified and prosperous man, he is also

shown to be connected to a world that

stretches far beyond the interior in which

he is depicted; the open window framing

a distant landscape serves as a métonymie

reminder of the far-flung geographies with

which his life and career were inextricably

linked. Born in Boston in 1649, Yale went

on to live on two other continents — Europe

and Asia. This was a time when Britons were

setting their sights beyond North America

to tap into trade networks crisscrossing the

Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, all the

way through the dense Malay-Indonesian

archipelago.4 At the heart of these global tra

jectories were men like Yale whose careers,

although marred by notoriety, demonstrated

grit and determination amid fierce Indian

and European rivalry.

When Yale was appointed governor of

Fort Saint George in 1687, Dutch, Portu

guese, Danish, and French settlements dotted

the Coromandel shoreline, while the power

ful Nayaks of Madurai ruled in the southern

tip of the peninsula, not far from the king

dom ofTanjore, where their formidable

rivals, the Marathas, held sway.5 Further

north, Golconda, once the stronghold of

the Katakiya and later the Qutb Shahi kings,

had succumbed to the might of the Mughal

emperor Aurangzeb on October 2, 1687. And

if these tensions were not worrisome enough,

53



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the Bay of Bengal had become a veritable

battleground with the Company's attack

on King Narai of Siam's ships in 1686.6 These

are some of the events that formed the back

drop ofYale's Coromandel career, and the

portraits of him that I will analyze, while

painted long after he had retired in England

and Wales, resonate with Yale's time in the

ever-changing terrain of rivalries and con

quests that defined the political landscape of

southern India.

I begin with Enoch Seeman the Younger's

portrait of the governor, which might have

inspired the picture given to Eisenhower (see

fig. i of "Going Global, Staying Local," also in

this volume).7 In this portrait, painted in 1717,

a portly, bewigged Yale strikes a pose in a bro

cade waistcoat heavily embellished with emer

alds and rubies. A string of gems tossed next

to a hat (also ornamented with a precious

stone) forms a continuum with the shimmer

ing jewels ornamenting Yale's figure. In effect,

54



Yale is pictured as a gem connoisseur, the very

materiality of the glittering fragments asserting

a deep-rooted engagement with the jewel

trade between Europe, India, and East Asia.

So impressive was Yale's reputation that in

1686 and 1687, royal emissaries from King

Narai requested him to secure rubies, emer

alds, and diamonds for their monarch.8

The location of this bustling jewel trade,

Fort Saint George, is depicted in the back

ground, while Yale's roots in New England

Fig. i. James Worsdale, Elihu Yale and David Yale,

1718. Oil on canvas, 83 x 59 in. (210.8 x 149.9 cm)

Elizabethan Club, Yale University. Gift to the

Elizabethan Club by Alexander S. Cochran, Yale 1896, Dec. 8,1911

Fig. 3. James Worsdale, Elihu Yale with His Black Ser

vant, i8th century. Oil on canvas, 91 x $6Vs in. (231.1 x

142.6 cm). Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Mrs.

Anson Phelps Stokes, 1910.1

55



Fig. 4. Enoch Seeman (the Younger), Governor Elihu

Yale (detail), 1717. Oil on canvas, 85 x 59 in. (215.9 x

149.9 cm)- Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Dudley

Long North, m.p., 1789.1

( 'Novus Anglia ) are inscribed beneath the

window. Founded in 1639 or 1640, the fort

was the first of the Company's three "modest

trading posts" where, some three decades

later, the Company's London directorate

would envision a highly profitable diamond

entrepôt.9 At least two other portraits of Yale,

both painted by James Worsdale, depict the

fort as the frontier where Yale had emerged

as a successful merchant and controversial

governor (figs. 2—3). More to the point,

Worsdale's depictions of the fort's embattled

coastline, with ships firing at each other, sig

nal the Company's need to maintain its own

fleet of vessels to protect its territory while

also suggesting that the sea (here, the Bay of

Bengal) is where "maritime travel, encounter

and conflict" converged to assert Britain's

identity as "a maritime nation" with far

reaching influence.10 In sharp contrast to the

conflicts marring its shorefront, the fort itself

appears as a tranquil space, its architecture a

visual fantasy concocted by Worsdale, who

had never visited India.

Significantly, Seeman rendered fort

Saint George on an island with a Union

flag flying above its ramparts (fig. 4), when

in fact the fort was located on coastal high

ground; ships dropped anchor about a mile

offshore and Company vessels patrolled the

shoreline." Whether or not he intended

such distortions, the artist emphasized what

Kathleen Wilson calls the "trope of the

island," an emergent episteme in an increas

ingly global era of mercantilism, exploration,

and discovery that forged fresh trajectories

"in the examination of [British] self, society,

and species."'2 Pivotal to this self-examination

was the Company's growing participation in

the diamond trade with nearby Golconda, a

complex and often controversial enterprise

that ensured enormous private fortunes for

high-ranking India-based administrators like

Yale, while at the same time securing a steady

trail of profits for the Company's headquar

ters in London.15 It was also from Fort Saint

George that the Company kept track of its

factories and warehouses along the Coroman

del Coast.'4

Thus the use of Fort Saint George as an

exotic backdrop in Yale's portraits is a power

ful testament to the Company's role as a pri

vate enterprise that fiercely guarded its assets

with its own army and fleet of ships. If the

Coromandel shoreline is where the Company

asserted its political agency, then Worsdale's

careful rendering of the diamond ring on

56



Yale's right hand conveys the ambitions of

Company-men-turned-gem-entrepreneurs

whose aspirations relied on the negotiations

and hurdles posed by maritime trade. From

this perspective alone, the images articulate

an emerging realm of masculinity defined by

mercantilism and private profiteering, and

whose chief protagonist —the Company

official — is repositioned as a man of service

expunged of any hint of controversy. As

such, they foreshadow the kinds of portraits

that would be painted from the 1750s onward

in which controversial Company men like

Robert Clive and Warren Hastings would be

enshrined as benevolent generals and

scholars.15

Moreover, Yale's portraits reinvent the

quotidian realm of commerce as a gentle

manly orbit of cultivated taste and refine

ment, thereby gentrifying mercantilism itself

as a viable conduit through which the lofty

ideals of British character and sensibility were

relocated in far-flung corners of the globe

and recalibrated through contact with dif

ferent cultures, communities, and political

economies. With ambition came prodigious

amounts of wealth, but Yale's prosperity

and social standing were carefully mediated

through patriotic emblems of power firmly

embedded in the Company's Coromandel

outpost. It was under Yale's governorship that

the Union flag supplanted the Company flag

at Fort Saint George, a turn of events empha

sized by Seeman, who depicts the Union flag

flying high on the island while a nearby ship bears the Company's earlier red-and-white

standard of Saint George.'6 By juxtaposing

the two flags, the artist evokes the cordial

albeit highly problematic relations between

Company and Crown fostered by the calcu

lating Company shareholder Josiah Child,

who secured the Company's charter by brib

ing Charles II and later James II, between

1681 and 1687.17 Entangled in this web of

machinations, the Union flag aligns the

Company with royal favor and, most impor

tantly, links Yale with royal (not just Com

pany) service.'8

More to the point, the presence of the

Union flag in Seeman's portrait asserts the

former governor's own connection with

James II, specifically his successful appeal to

the Privy Council in 1695 to clear his name,

which had become mired in controversy

because of intense Company rivalry, or in

Yale's own words, "the severe & illegall Pro

ceedings against him by the Commissary

and new President of the said Company."19

If Yale's petition drew the sympathy of the

council, it also deeply unsettled the Com

pany's London directors and Madras admin

istrators, who immediately sanctioned his

release from his house arrest at Fort Saint

George. The imposing ramparts of both See

man's and Worsdale's compositions convey

the very political fissures and fragile loyalties

that demarcated Company identity when

ambitious and autocratic men like Yale com

peted for power and privilege in the tightly

guarded social, political, and economic strata

of London and Madras.

In [718, soon after Seeman completed

his picture, Worsdale painted his double por

trait of Yale and a fashionable young man,

most likely the governor's cousin David Yale,

both of whom appear before the backdrop of

the fort (see fig. 2).10 In this work, the idea of

gentlemanliness rendered through carefully

choreographed links with family legacy is

intermeshed with Yale's Company career and

personal tragedies. In 1688 Yale and his wife,

Catherine, lost their only son, David, in

Madras. Twenty-four years later, Yale's ille

gitimate son, Charles, died in Cape Town.2'

By 1711 word had reached New Haven that

Elihu Yale, a "New England" and "Connecti

cut man" residing in London with a "prodi

gious estate," had sent for "his kinsman," a

young "relation of his from Connecticut to

make him his heir, having no son."22 David

Yale, the relative in question, visited his

cousin in 1712 but returned to Connecticut

about six years later, whereupon he was

appointed deacon of the congregational

church in North Haven.2' It remains unclear

exactly when Worsdale might have painted

57



Fig. 5. Unknown artist, Elihu Yale, 1648/49-1721.

Oil on canvas, 49Î/2 x 40 in. (125.7 x 101.6 cm). Yale

University Art Gallery, Gift of Joseph Verner Reed,

b.a. 1926, and Joseph Verner Reed, Jr., b.a. 1959,

1962.30

his portrait alongside Elihu Yale's. It is pos

sible that Worsdale made preliminary studies

of his sitters before finishing his composition.

In any event, the final painted image empha

sizes a keen sense of British identity filtered

through an extended lineage that is held

together by descent, blood, and shared cul

tural norms, though its members were scat

tered across the world.

In this sense, Worsdale's painting is simi

lar to Seeman's earlier composition in that it

bears witness to Yale's New England origins:

in place of Seeman's inscription beneath the

view of the fort, David Yale here stands as the

living embodiment of "Novus Anglia." If this

composition represents the convergence of

Asia, North America, and Europe, the three

continents where Yale's life and career had

unfolded, it also confirms that boundaries of

British selfhood were as varied as the differ

ent worlds in which the contours of British

ness were shaped. As Johannes Fabian has

observed, "[D]ispersal in space reflects . . .

sequence in Time," generating a messy yet

cohesive taxonomy of collective identity pro

duced by coeval assertions of selfhood, family,

and community across different landscapes.14

From this perspective, Seeman's and Wors

dale's compositions invite us to contemplate

a prosperous retiree in London, while taking

stock of his Indian history.

Fort Saint George was not the only land

scape of Yale's past to appear in his painted

58



portraits. Pias Grono, the Welsh estate near

Wrexham that he had inherited from his

father, most probably appears in the back

ground of an eighteenth-century portrait

painted by an unknown artist (fig. 5). Little is

known of the house, for it was sold by Yale's

"heirs-at law" in 1728 and torn down in the

1870s.25 Nevertheless, its representation as a

grand country home valorizes Yale as a dis

tinguished landowner in a pictorial formula

of the time favored by polite society that

codified an "actual landscape," as Charles

Harrison has noted, as "rightful property."26

Gesturing toward the house, a bewigged and

robed Yale is the epitome of landed wealth

and privilege.

In eighteenth-century parlance, however,

property was complicated business. This

brings me back to Worsdale's portrait of Yale

(see fig. 3), in which a black page is delivering a letter inscribed, "To the Honble Elihu Yale

Esq. Governor of Fort St. George." Whether

or not Yale personally owned African slaves

is unclear, but he undoubtedly engaged with

the Company's practice of trafficking in the

Indian Ocean, where Dutch, French, and

Portuguese rivals transported the largest

number of slaves.27 By 1688 the Mughal gov

ernment had complained about the number

of "children and servants spirited and stolen

from them," targeting the Dutch in particu

lar for "exporting . . . slaves from Metchlepa

tam [sic] ,"lS A cautious Yale and his Madras

Council immediately banned the trading

of slaves. To what extent these connections

with the Indian Ocean slave trade influenced

Worsdale's composition is ambiguous at best.

(It is possible that the page might be from

the Coromandel Coast.) But the very fluidity

of transoceanic trafficking patterns indicates

that the prevailing vogue for interspersing

images of black servants with aristocratic

sitters in English paintings was not solely

directed by the Atlantic slave trade, although

it was still heavily dependent on it.

This pictorial trend nourished after the

restoration of Charles II, in 1660, and was

spurred on by the subsequent establishment

Fig. 6. Jonathan Richardson the Elder, Lady Anne

Cavendish, 1725. Oil on canvas, 46 x 52 in. (116.8 x

132.1 cm). Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Bruce

McCashin, B1985.35.1

in 1663 of the Royal Company of Adventur

ers Trading into Africa, after which black

slaves were more readily available. With the

demand for slaves growing in plantations

in Barbados and Jamaica, the slave market

continued to expand at home and abroad

with black servants emerging as fashionable

courtly accoutrements, or, as Hall puts it, as

"meta objects" who represented "both the rar

ity of foreign luxury goods and the subjectiv

ity and value of white owners."29 Seen in this

light, the Duke of Devonshire's black page in

the conversation piece commemorating the

marriage of Yale's second daughter to Lord

James Cavendish (see "Going Global, Staying

Local," fig. 4) amplifies the power and status

of the white sitters while drawing attention

to the absent figure being exchanged in this

transaction: Anne Yale, soon to be Lady Cav

endish (fig. 6), for whom Yale had made a handsome marriage settlement.30 One form

of property (the slave) signals the expansion

of wealth (another form of property) for the

Cavendishes through marriage. A smaller version of this conversation

piece (fig. 7) suggests that Yale may have had

59



Fig. 7. Unknown artist, Elihu Yale, 1708. Oil on cop

per, 15V2 \2ix/i6 in. (39.4 X 53.3 X 0.16 cm). Yale Uni

versity Art Gallery, Gift of Mrs. Arthur W. Butler to

the Yale University Library, accepted at Yale University

Library, 1960.51

a second image—a cabinet picture —

painted

as a keepsake or a reminder of his newly

forged links with the Cavendishes. (The

larger painting remained with Anne and was

displayed at Staveley Hall, the Cavendish

residence.)31 The figures are the same: from

the left, seated, Lord Cavendish, Yale, and

William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devon

shire, and standing behind this group, a law

yer, Mr. Tunstal.3! In the background, the

smaller figures may be the duke's children,

inserted as allegorical references to marriage

and fertility.33 Interestingly, the composition

was painted on a copper plate, which was

engraved on the reverse by Richard Palmer

with a map of ancient Egypt, titled Aigyptus

Antiqua Divisa in Nomos (fig. 8).34 It is not

clear why the plate was repurposed in this

manner, but the picture affirms Yale's interest

in paintings made on copper, of which he

owned several examples."

If Yale's portraits were celebrated on a

grand scale as befits a prosperous merchant,

then his bewigged profile bust, with curls

tumbling over his neck-cloth, carved in tor

toiseshell for a silver snuffbox made by the

famous French Huguenot medalist and horn

carver John Obrisset, offers an intimate

glimpse of his taste for precious things (fig.

9).36 Yale owned no fewer than 406 snuff

boxes, and this particular artifact with his

family crest carved on the reverse was "pre

sented by some of the Governors family" to a

Major Elihu Hall of Wallingford in 1755.57

6o



Fig. 8. Richard Palmer, engraved copper plate (reverse

of fig. 7).

Fig. 9. John Obrisset, Snuffbox, 1710—20. Silver and

tortoiseshell, %s x 3Va x 29/i6 in. (1.43 x 8.3 x 6.5 cm).

Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Ezra Stiles, 1788.1

Fig. io. George Owen Bonawit, Elihu Yale, 1930—31. Stained glass, 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University

61



The snuffbox was purchased in 1788 by Yale

College President Ezra Stiles, who deposited

it at Yale.'8 In a fitting tribute to both Stiles's

gift and Elihu Yale, the New York—based

stained-glass artist George Owen Bonawit

drew inspiration from Obrisset's carved

image to create what can be considered the

last portrait of the Madras governor (fig. 10).39

Executed between 1930 and 1931, the unmis

takable profile bust appears in Bonawit's mag

nificent spread of stained glass in Sterling

Memorial Library at Yale, placing the bene

factor of Yale College at the heart of the

campus he helped create.40

Elihu Yale's images embody the inter

connectedness of histories and geographies

at the point when the East India Company

was only just beginning to realize its potential

in India. In attempting to "fix" the impres

sion of a successful gentleman-merchant,

these images of Yale in fact underscore the

fluidity of such identifications in an increas

ingly transoceanic world where notions of

community and identity were situational and

fragile at best. Their strident insistence on

a bewigged gentlemanliness registers Yale's

need to be associated with the expected and

indeed familiar signs of masculine politeness,

especially at a time when global commerce

demanded the production of identities and

agendas that frequently collided with the

political and cultural aims of the Company's

London directorate.

I am grateful to Susan B. Matheson, Amy R. W.

Meyers, Cecie Clement, Patricia E. Kane, Angus

Trumble, Cassandra Albinson, Molly Balikov, Stacey

Wujcik, Katherine Chabla, Linsey LaFrenier, Michael

Marsland, Amanda Patrick, Judith Schiff, and Robert

Carlucci at Yale University; Andrew Peppitt at

Chatsworth; Sarah Charlton at the Centre for Buck

inghamshire Studies; and Michaela Giebelhausen at

the University of Essex for their generous assistance.

I also thank the Duke of Devonshire for his kind

permission to conduct my research in the archives

at Chatsworth. Last but not least, I am grateful to

Benjamin Zucker, b.a. 1962, Yale alumnus, author, and

distinguished gem authority, for his generosity and

expertise.

1. President Dwight Eisenhower, letter to Yale Univer

sity President A. Whitney Griswold, March 16, i960,

curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale

University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.

2. According to a letter written on June 10,1936, by Yale president James Angelí to the governor of Madras,

Lord Erskine, as well as the correspondence of the

American writer Katherine Mayo, author of Mother

India (1927), the portrait was displayed in the Govern

ment House in Madras in the 1930s. Copies of both

President Angelí s and Mayos letters are in the curato

rial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.

3. The British Raj, or British rule in India, is generally divided into two broad periods. The first is the Com

pany Raj, a time when the East India Company con

solidated its presence in India as a major mercantile

and political power following Robert Clive's victory at

the Battle of Plassey, in 1757. The second period is

known as the Victorian Raj, marking the shift of

power from the Company to the Crown in the wake

of the calamitous Indian Rebellion of 1857. Specifically, it refers to the time when Queen Victoria ruled India

through her viceroys — first as queen, beginning in

1858, and then as Empress of India, from 1877 until

her death, in 1901. Viceroys continued to rule India

until 1947.

4. Nordin Hussin, Trade and Society in the Straits of Melaka: Dutch Melaka and English Penang, 1780—1830

(Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies,

2007), 8.

5. Jennifer Howes, The Courts of Pre-Colonial South

India: Material Culture and Kingship (London: Rout

ledgeCurzon, 2003), 62.

6. Records of Fort Saint George: Despatches from England

1686—1692 (Madras: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Press, 1929), 10, 140.

7. Yale's great-grandson Dudley Long North (1748—

1829) transferred Seeman's portrait of Elihu Yale to

Yale College in 1789. A year later, Benjamin Franklin

thanked Yale College President Ezra Stiles for his sug

gestion that Franklins portrait be displayed "in the

same Room," alongside Seeman's image of Yale. Benja min Franklin, letter to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, March

9, 1790; reproduced in Benjamin Franklin, The Por

table Benjamin Franklin, ed. Larzer Ziff (New York:

Penguin, 2005), 468—70.

8. John Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam in the

Seventeenth Century (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,

Trübner, 1890), 274.

Gl



9- Partha Mitter, "The Early British Port Cities of

India: Their Planning and Architecture Circa 1640

l75 7" Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

45, no. 2 (1986): 95. The Portuguese ceded Bombay to

the English in 1664. Fort William was established in

1690. On the subject of diamonds and the history of

the fort, see Bruce P. Lenman, "The East India Com

pany and the Trade in Non-Metallic Precious Metals

from Sir Thomas Roe to Diamond Pitt," in The Worlds

of the East India Company, ed. H. V. Bowen, Marga rette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby (Woodbridge, UK:

Boydell, 2002), 106.

10. Geoff Quilley, Empire to Nation: Art, History and

the Visualization of Maritime Britain, 1/68—182 p (New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), 3.

11. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and

Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650—1740 (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1986), 8—9.

12. Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness,

Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London:

Routledge, 2003), 5.

13. For a closer examination of Yale's role in the dia

mond trade, see my essay "Going Global, Staying Local: Elihu Yale the Art Collector" in the present volume.

14. Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce,

15—33

15. Robert Clive, a general of the East India Company who is believed to have cemented Britain's imperial ambitions in India following his victory at the Battle

of Plassey in 1757, was castigated for hoarding wealth

from his controversial jagir (property) in Bengal and

for accepting lavish rewards and bribes from various

members of the Indian elite. Warren Hastings, the

former Governor-General of Bengal whose infamous

trial in London dragged on for nearly eight years, between 1787 and 1795, was accused of corruption and

tyranny. The charges leveled against him focused on an

array of allegations, including his execution of Nanda

kumar, who had criticized the powerful Hastings for

accepting expensive gifts from the Nawabs of Bengal; his ruthless treatment of the Raja of Benares, Chait

Singh; and his attack on the palaces of the Begums of

Awadh to confiscate treasures. For more on Clive, see

Romita Ray, "Baron of Bengal: Robert Clive and the

Birth of an Imperial Image," Transculturation in British

Art, 1770—ipso, ed. Julie F. Codell (London: Ashgate,

2012), 21-38. On Hastings's trial, see P. J. Marshall, The

Trial of Warren Hastings (London: Oxford University

Press, 1965).

16. Hiram Bingham, Elihu Yale: The American Nabob

of Queen Square (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939), 172.

17. Richard Grassby, "Child, Sir Josiah, first baronet

(bap. 1631, d. 1699)," in Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed.,

ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, http://www. oxforddnb.com (accessed February 17, 2012).

18. That Yale regarded himself as a significant part of

this circuit of royal and mercantile power is also borne

out by his extensive collection of royal portraits. See

A Sixth Sale of Elihu Yale, Esq. (Late Governor of Fort

St. George) Deceased (London, 1723), 7, 10—12.

19. Elihu Yale, quoted in Bingham, Elihu Yale,

290-98.

20. David Yale was Elihu Yale's first cousin once

removed. In historical documents, David is sometimes

referred to as Elihu's nephew; the terms cousin and

nephew were often interchangeable in the language of kinship in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

England. For a useful discussion of the plurality of

these terms, see Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in

Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and

Patronage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004), 149-51.

21. Bingham, Elihu Yale, 166, 312.

22. Jeremiah Dummer, letter to the Reverend James

Pierpont, May 22, 1711; quoted in Franklin Bowditch

Dexter, ed., Documentary History of Yale University under the Original Charter of the Collegiate School of

Connecticut, 1701—1745 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press, 1916), 56.

23. Elihu Yale, Descendents of David Yale with Genea

logical Notices of Each Family (New Haven, Conn.:

Storer and Stone, Printers, 1850), 33. Although Elihu

Yale did not make David Yale his male heir after all, he

acknowledged him in his will as his "Godson." Elihu

Yale's will, prob 20/2861, National Archives, Kew, UK.

24. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthro

pology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia Univer

sity Press, 2002), 12.

25. Rodney Horace Yale, Yale Genealogy and History of Wales (Beatrice, Nebr.: Printed by Milburn and Scott,

1908), 119.

26. Charles Harrison, "The Effects of Landscape," in

Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2002), 213.

63



ir¡. Richard B. Allen, "Satisfying the 'Want for

Labouring People': European Slave Trading in the

Indian Ocean, 1500-1850 "Journal of World History 21,

no. i (2010): 61-64.

28. Quoted in J. Talboys Wheeler, Madras in the Olden

Time: Being a History of the Presidency (Delhi: AES,

1993), 103—4. The quotation refers to Machilipatnam, or Masulipatnam, the Indian city located about 200

miles southeast of Hyderabad. It appears in the Com

pany's official Consultation Books maintained at Fort

Saint George, in an entry dated on May 14, 1688.

29. David Bindman, " The Black Presence in British

Art: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in From the

"Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition: Artists of the

Renaissance and Baroque, ed. Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., vol. 3, pt. 1 of The Image of the Black

in Western Art, ed. Bindman and Gates (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

2010), 255—56; and Kim E Hall, Things of Darkness:

Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 212.

30. The marriage settlement ensured that Anne Yale

would be provided £800 as jointure, along with exten

sive property in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.

Marriage Settlement of Anne Yale and Lord James

Cavendish, July 6, 1708, d/ch/a/8oo, Centre for Buck

inghamshire Studies, Aylesbury, UK. For more about

eighteenth-century dowries and jointures, see H. J.

Habakkuk, "Marriage Settlements in the Eighteenth

Century," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32

(1950): 15—30; and Amy Louise Erickson, Women and

Property in Early Modern England (New York: Rout

ledge, 1993), 79~97- Yale had been trying to secure

good marriages for his daughters for some time.

According to Captain Edward Harrison, a London

merchant and the governor of Madras from 1709 to

1717, prior to Anne Yale's marriage, Elihu Yale could be

found in his London home entertaining "a broker or

two about matching his daughters." Captain Edward

Harrison, letter to Thomas Pitt at Fort Saint George,

July 25, 1707; published in The Manuscripts of /. B.

Fortescue, Esq., Preserved at Dropmore, ed. Baron Wil

liam Wyndham Grenville (London: Eyre and Spottis woode, 1892), 1:30.

31. The larger composition was subsequently trans

ferred to Ford Hall, the seat of the Bagshaws who

might have inherited it from the Reverend James Gis

borne, Rector of Staveley (d. 1759) and close friend of

the Cavendishes. In 1941 a Mr. F. E. Gisborne Bagshaw of Ford Hall (a direct descendant of the rector) sold it

to the duke of Devonshire, who in turn gifted the

painting to the newly created Yale Center for British

Art, in New Haven, Connecticut. Ironically, Mr. Bag shaw had intended for the picture to remain in Great

Britain instead of entering an American collection. See

uncalendared file of correspondence relating to the

group portrait of Elihu Yale and James Cavendish,

Devonshire Manuscripts, Chatsworth, UK; and Fran

cis Thompson, Catalogue of Paintings in the Devonshire

Collection, 1933, entry 216a, unpublished manuscript, Devonshire Manuscripts, Chatsworth, UK.

32. Mr. Tunstal was allegedly the lawyer who was com

missioned to draw up the marriage contract. See

Thompson, Catalogue of Paintings in the Devonshire

Collection, entry 216a. However, Tunstal's name does

not appear in the marriage settlement signed by Elihu

Yale, Anne Yale, James Cavendish, Stephen Evans,

and Dudley North. For the document, see cbs,

d/ch/a/8oo, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies,

Aylesbury, UK.

33. There are some differences between the rendering of the children and the garden in this, the smaller

version, and that in the larger painting displayed at

Staveley Hall. For instance, in the background of

the smaller picture, the little girl with a raised hand

bends to her right; in the larger version, her posture is

upright. Moreover, the formal layout of the garden contains more architectural details and is more clearly

mapped out in the smaller painting.

34. The map printed from this engraved plate was

published in Amsterdam in 1662 by the Dutch cartog

rapher Joan Janssonius. We do not know if this aspect of the painted object appealed to Elihu Yale, but the

map of ancient Egypt engraved by Richard Palmer was

similar to maps of Egypt and the Holy Land found in

the English clergyman Ephraim Pagitt's Christianogra

phie (London, 1635), a copy of which was included in

the gift of 417 books Yale donated in 1718 to Yale Col

lege. For more about Yale's gift of books to Yale Col

lege, see Donald G. Wing and Margaret L. Johnson, "The Books Given by Elihu Yale in 1718," Yale Univer

sity Library Gazette, October 1938, 46—67.

35. See, for instance, Christopher Cock, The Last Sale

for this Season Being the Most Valuable Part of the Col

lection of Elihu Yale, Esq. (Late Governor of Fort St.

George) Deceasd (London, 1722), 11-12, 14, 16, 21. The

tradition of painting on copper emerged in the six

teenth century around the time when copper began to

be used by printmakers to create etchings and engrav

ings. By the 1600s, a large number of portraits were

painted on copper by Dutch artists, no doubt because

of the jewel-like pictorial effects that could be achieved

in oil on a metallic support. Furthermore, copper was

used in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

64



to create smaller copies of easel paintings, sometimes

by the artist of the original, but more often by an

anonymous copyist. It is possible that the artist who

painted the larger image displayed at Staveley Hall

also painted the smaller cabinet picture, or that a skill

ful copyist painted the reduced image for Elihu Yale.

See Edgar Peters Bowron, "A Brief History of Euro

pean Oil Paintings on Copper, 1560—1775," in Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on

Copper, 7575-/775, exh. cat., ed. Michael K. Koma

necky (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),

11-24; and Andrea Kirsh and Rustin S. Levenson, See

ing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art

Historical Studies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press, 2002), 60.

36. Kathryn C. Buhler and Graham Hood, American

Silver: Garvan and Other Collections in the Yale Univer

sity Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press, 1970), 1:317-18; E. Alfred Jones, "The Silver

Snuff Box of Elihu Yale," International Studio 99

(August 1931): 18; and George Dudley Seymour, "The

Snuff Box of St. Eli: A Little Known Portrait of Yale's

Great Early Benefactor and Patron Saint," Yale Alumni

Weekly, January 28, 1927, 492-93. It has been surmised

that the snuffbox appears on the table near Yale's

smoking pipe in the conversation piece featuring Yale

and Cavendish. See unpublished notes in the curato

rial file for the snuffbox, Department of American

Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery.

37. Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, d.d.,

ll.d.: President of Yale College, ed. Franklin Bowditch

Dexter (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901),

3:316. For more about Yale's family crest, see Frances

Bailey Hewitt, Genealogy of the Durand, Whalley, Barnes and Yale Families: With the Crests of the Durand

and Yale Families and a Collection of Portraits and

Photographs (Chicago: Lakeside, 1912), 85-86.

38. Stiles purchased the box from Caleb Cook of

Wallingford for forty shillings. See Stiles, Literary

Diary, 3:316.

39. Gay Walker, Bonawit, Stained Glass, and Yale:

G. Owen Bonawit's Work at Yale University and Else

where (Wilsonville, Ore.: Wildwood, 2000), 12; and

Gay Walker, Stained Glass in Yale's Sterling Memorial

Library: A Guide to the Decorative Glass of G. Owen

Bonawit (Wilsonville, Ore.: Wildwood, 2006), 18.

40. The portrait complemented Bonawit's designs for eight windows in room 212 of Sterling Memorial

Library for which the artist relied on images from the

Speculum humanae salvationis, a medieval manuscript

donated by Elihu Yale in 1714 and the first of its kind

to enter the Yale collections. See Gay Walker, "Bril

liance All Around: The Stained Glass of Sterling and

Its Maker," a paper presented at the Sterling Memorial

Library on January 27, zoo6, available online at

http://www.library.yale.edu/75th/walker_brilliance.pdf

(accessed February 27, 2012); Walker, Bonaivit, Stained

Glass, and Yale, 10-11; and the "Medieval and Renais

sance Manuscript" page of the Beinecke Rare Books

and Manuscript Library website, http://beinecke.

Iibrary.yale.edu/digitalguides/pre1600.html (accessed

February 27, 2012).

65



Documents

\"Elihu Yale at Yale.\" Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (December 2012): 52-65