Andrews, Elisha Benjamin (1844 - 1917)
Role: Eighth President, Class of 1870Dates: 1890 - 1898
Portrait Location: Sayles Hall 108
Artist: Chase, William Merritt (1849 - 1916)
Portrait Date: 1893
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39 1/4
Framed Dimensions: 49 1/2
Brown Portrait Number: 82
Brown Historical Property Number: 597
Born in Hinsdale, Hew Hampshire, in 1844, E. B. Andrews was the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. Andrews left school to enlist in the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery when the Civil War broke out, and rose to the rank of second lieutenant before being discharged in October 1864 due to injury. Resuming his education, he entered Brown in 1866 and graduated in 1870. He was ordained as a Baptist minister four years later and became president of Denison College, where he earned a reputation as a liberal thinker. Andrews taught theology and philosophy at Newton and Colby Colleges before coming to Brown to teach history and political economy in 1883. During this time he published two scholarly history texts and became an enormously popular teacher. He was unanimously elected to the presidency in 1889. Andrews is credited with a great expansion of undergraduate enrollment and the admission of women to examinations. He spent time in Europe, especially Germany, studying the university system abroad and was moving the institution toward a higher status as a research university when he inadvertently found himself the center of a political controversy with Brown Corporation members. Unlike many alumni and supporters of Brown, Andrews openly favored the free and unilateral coinage of silver by the United States, an important issue in the 1896 presidential campaign. When the Corporation expressed its disapproval and requested that Andrews, whatever his opinions may be, keep these views to himself as they were offensive to members of the Brown community, Andrews resigned stating that he would not relinquish his freedom of speech. The case attracted nationwide attention to the issue of academic freedom. An embarrassed Brown Corporation, spurred on by a host of professors and alumni, urged Andrews to take back his resignation. Andrews did retract his resignation, but the damage was done and he left Brown a year later to become superintendent of the Chicago public schools. He ended his years as chancellor of the University of Nebraska, where he dramatically expanded the institution's enrollments and resources. Andrew's successors at Brown remember him for turning a small New England college into a true university, for introducing women into the realm of scholarship, and?in a fine twist of a potentially dark moment in Brown history?for his advocacy of academic freedom.
This handsome oil was painted by well-known American portraitist William Merrit Chase. Like his subject, Chase also spent much time in Germany. Chase entered the K?nigliche Akademie in Munich in 1872 where he studied with many well-known European and American painters and mastered bravura brushwork. Because of the high regard in which Chase was held in the art world, in 1909 the Rhode Island School of Design asked to borrow this portrait for exhibition at the Museum of Art.
After an extended stay at the RISD Museum Chases's portrait of Elisha B. Andrews was to returned to Brown. In the spacious, well lit auditorium at Sayles Hall, the painting seemed uncharacteristically flat, dark and inexpressive for for a Chase portrait. Laboratory examination in 2005 revealed that over the years it had suffered a tear to the left of the subject's head, and as part of the treatment, had been mounted with wax to a sheet of aluminum. In addition, the painting had been partially cleaned, particularly around the head, leaving conspicuously brighter and darker areas. The reason for this became apparent when conservation work was begun at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center: examination with UV light revealed that Chase had originally used this canvas to begin a painting of another subject. Over time the ghost of that original image began to emerge in the lower section of the canvas. When the upper section was cleaned, lower area of the canvas was overpainted to hide those pentimenti. In 2006 conservators at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center were able to remove the aluminum backing, restoring some of the original texture of Chase's canvas, and mended the tear properly. Blackish-yellow grime, the heavy-handed overpainting, and several splatters of unknown origin were removed, revealing once again the mastery of Chases's brushwork. In just the right light the careful viewer can see the outline of the underlying portrait head.