Jarvis

was apprenticed to the print publisher, Edward
Savage, who, in 1800, moved from Philadelphia
to New York, taking his employees with him.

David Edwin, a young English engraver, who
had just arrived in America, was a fellow-
apprentice in Savage's shop, and from him Jarvis
derived most of his knowledge of drawing and
engraving. As soon as the time of his appren-
ticeship expired Jarvis began to engrave on his
own account, and it was not long before he
turned to portrait painting. About 1805 he en-
tered into a sort of partnership with another
young artist, Joseph Wood, and they took a
studio in Park Row, New York. They made
miniatures, having had some slight instruction
in this branch of work from Edward Malbone;
they also made profile portraits on glass, which
were popular at that time. Their success was
so great that they often took in as much as one
hundred dollars a day. A little later Jarvis set
up a studio for himself in Broadway and for
a while was busily employed in making por-
traits on bristol board at five dollars each, "very
like and very pretty." He also produced portraits
in oil or miniatures on ivory when they were
preferred. In 1807 Thomas Sully, being without
work, was taken on as an assistant by Jarvis,
but this arrangement was of short duration. They
parted, and Sully went to Philadelphia, while
Jarvis continued on his way in New York.
Jarvis was married in 1808, but the match was
apparently unhappy, for his wife eventually left
him, taking the children with her.

About this time he made a successful trip to
Baltimore to paint portraits. In 1810 he went to
Charleston, S. C, and a few years later he
pushed on as far as New Orleans, taking with
him young Henry Inman [#.z/.], who was then
his apprentice and assistant These southern
trips became a regular fixture each winter. Jarvis
was accustomed to receive six sitters a day, and
with Inman's aid he turned out half-a-dozen por-
traits a week. His facility was prodigious. His
income grew to impressive proportions. But he
was extravagant and reckless; moreover, as he
advanced in years, he became a hard drinker.
William Dunlap, who knew him, relates many
amusing and some pathetic tales of his way of
life. He was a typical bohemian—talented, bril-
liant, and popular, a picturesque figure, fond of
notoriety and enjoying a great reputation as a
story-teller and practical joker. He associated
with such men as Irving, Fulton, Verplanck, and
Van Wyke, but in his latter days, owing in part
to his intemperance and in part to illness, he
gradually lost his hold on his clientele, sank into
comparative obscurity, and finally died in pov-

Jarvis

erty at the home of his sister, a Mrs. Childs, in
New York.

He was generally considered the foremost por-
trait painter of his time in New York, and he
enjoyed a national reputation. His work was,
however, very uneven. The most important ex-
amples, dating from the thirties, comprised a
series of full-length portraits of the military and
naval heroes of the War of 1812 made for the
City Hall of New York and the notable series of
portraits owned by the New York Historical
Society. Among these were portraits of Perry,
Hull, Swift, McDonough, Bainbridge, and Brown.
He also painted the portraits of Henry Clay,
John Randolph of Roanoke, DeWitt Clinton,
Robert Morris, J. Fenimore Cooper, Thomas
Paine, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and James Law-
rence, who was mortally wounded in the duel
between the Chesapeake and the Shannon off the
Massachusetts coast. Isham thought that Jarvis'
painting suffered from his manner of life. His
work, he remarks, shows the haste of production,
not so much in lack of finish as in lack of in-
spiration. His color is dull and monotonous, but
he drew well, and he had great facility in catch-
ing a likeness.

[The main source, almost the only source of infor-
mation about Jarvis, is Wm. Dunlap's Hist, of the Rise
and Progress of the Arts of Design in the U. S.
(1834), in which a whole chapter is devoted to a ram-
bling: but interesting account of Jarvis' life. See also;
Samuel Isham, The Hist, of Am. Painting (1905) ; H.
T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867); Theodore
Bolton, Early Am. Portrait Painters in Miniature
(1921) ; J. W. Harrington, "John Wesley Jarvis, Por-
traitist," in the Am. Mag. of Art, Nov. 1927; D. McN.
Stauffer,-4?n. Engravers upon Copper and Steel (1907) ;
catalogues of the Hudson-Fulton exhibition, New
York, 1909 ; Panama-Pacific exposition, San Francisco,
1915. The date of Jarvis' death, which is variously
given, is taken for this sketch from Stauffer, ante.]

W.H.D.

JARVIS, THOMAS JORDAN (Jan. 18,1836-
June 17,1915), governor of North Carolina, was
born at Jarvisburg, Currituck County, N. C., the
son of Bannister Hardy Jarvis, a Methodist min-
ister, and Elizabeth Daly. They were poor, but
Thomas worked his way through Randolph-
Macon College and received the degree of AJB.
in 1860 and M.A. in 1861. At the outbreak of
the Civil War he was teaching in Pasquotank
County. He enlisted, soon became a lieutenant
in the 8th North Carolina Regiment, rose to
captain in 1863, and was permanently disabled
at Drewry's Bluff. After the war he opened a
store in Tyrrel County and began to read law.
He was a delegate to the convention of 1865
from Currituck. In 1867 he was licensed and in
1868 was elected to the lower house of the legis-
lature. He was also a candidate for elector on
the Democratic ticket. In the legislature he

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