Mary Fairlie Cooper

William Dunlap's portrait of Mary Fairlie Cooper, painted probably in the 1810s, is a work by the man often called the father of American art history. Dunlap (1766-1839) was a painter, playwright, and historian whose monumental History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, published in 1834, was the first comprehensive history of American art and remains an indispensable source for the early period of American painting. Mary Fairlie Cooper was likely a member of the prominent Fairlie and Cooper families of New York, reflecting Dunlap's connections to the social elite who were the primary patrons of portraiture in early America. The dating to the 1810s places this portrait in the period following Dunlap's return from studying in London with Benjamin West, when he was working actively as a portraitist in New York. The early 19th century was a formative period for American portraiture, when artists were developing a visual language adequate to represent the citizens of the young republic. Dunlap's portraits from this period typically display the directness and lack of pretension that distinguished the best American work from the more mannered conventions of British society portraiture. As a painter, Dunlap was competent but not brilliant; his historical importance lies primarily in his later career as a historian and chronicler. Yet his portraits possess a documentary value that goes beyond their aesthetic qualities, recording the faces and bearing of the generation that lived through the Revolution and the early republic. This portrait of Mary Fairlie Cooper is a example of how Dunlap's artistic practice, combined with his historian's eye, produced images of genuine historical significance even when they fell short of the highest artistic standards.

Dunlap's dual role as portraitist and art historian makes his surviving works uniquely valuable as documents of early American culture. His portraits capture the generation that built the republic, while his written histories preserve the stories of the artists who recorded that generation on canvas.

This portrait by the father of American art history demonstrates how early American portraiture served both aesthetic and documentary functions, recording the faces of the republic's founding generation.