Rogers, William (1751 - 1824)
Role: First Student Admitted to the College of Rhode island (now Brown University)Dates:
Portrait Location: Maddock Alumni Center 100
Artist: Peale, Rembrandt (1778 - 1860)
Portrait Date: 1795
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 21 1/8"w x 27 7/8"h
Framed Dimensions: 26 1/2"w x 30 1/2"h
Brown Portrait Number: 243
Brown Historical Property Number: 485
William Rogers, born in Newport, Rhode Island, enrolled at Rhode Island College (named Brown in 1805) September of 1865, a day before its first president, James Manning, was appointed. Rogers was fourteen years old. The following June he was still the only student when President Manning's brother-in-law enrolled. At the college's first commencement in 1769, Rogers delivered an "oration on benevolence." He then taught in Newport until he was baptized and licensed to preach in 1771. He moved to Philadelphia, where he would remain the rest of his life, and presided over the Baptist Church. During the Revolutionary War he served as chaplain to Pennsylvania's battalions and was promoted to brigade chaplain of the Continental Army by 1778. Upon ending his military service he was offered appointments in three churches, each of a different denomination. He declined all these offers, preferring to preach at Philadelphia's poorest churches. In 1784 he was delegated to the task of procuring a new seal for his alma mater among the craftsmen of Philadelphia; the old seal bore images of the King and Queen of England. In 1789, Rogers received a professorship of English and oratory at the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania). He left in 1812, however, protesting the "restless and ambitious spirit of a despotical provost." Rogers was an advocate for the gradual emancipation of slavery and for the improvement of public prisons as well as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature.
Rembrandt Peale is considered the most ambitious son of painter Charles Wilson Peale, both of Philadelphia. He completed his first portrait at the age of thirteen, and by 1795 had begun a series of life portraits of President Washington. After studying the neoclassical style in Paris for two years, he returned to Philadelphia in 1810 and exhibited his "Roman Daughter," which drew harsh criticism as inappropriate subject matter. Disappointed, he moved to Baltimore and opened a combined art and natural history museum, on the model of his father's Philadelphia Peale Museum. There he painted the enormous, moralistic "The Court of Death," which had much greater popular success than his previous effort. After touring with this work, expounding on a "democratic theory of painting," Peale went on attempt a standard in national portraiture. He painted over 78 versions of George Washington in his lifetime, although his portrait of Thomas Jefferson earned him the highest praise. Peale completed close to a thousand portraits over his lifetime. He is believed to be the artist who painted this likeness of Rogers.