Gammell, William (1812-1889)
Role:Dates:
Portrait Location: Library Annex
Artist: Breul, Hugo (1854-1910)
Portrait Date:
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 23 1/2
Framed Dimensions: 36
Brown Portrait Number: 54
Brown Historical Property Number: 1387
William Gammell was a professor of belles-lettres, rhetoric, history, and political economy at Brown University from 1835 until 1864. Gammell was born in 1812 in Medfield, Massachusetts. From birth, he had connections to Brown University. His father was a trustee of the university and Gammell himself was an alumnus, graduating in 1831. Immediately after his graduation, Gammell presided over a preparatory school in Massachusetts; however, a year later he returned to Providence and took a position as a tutor at Brown. In 1835, he became an assistant professor at the college (he became a full professor in 1837), and taught literature and rhetoric. In 1843, Gammell began to teach history; such was his expertise in history and in economics that he became chair of these departments in 1850. He retired from Brown in 1864, at the age of 52. Gammell authored several biographies, one of Roger Williams and another of Rhode Island Governor Samuel Ward. Further, as befits his legacy as the son of a Baptist minister, Gammell also wrote a brief history of Baptist missions in the United States. Gammell was engaged in a variety of civic groups, and was particularly instrumental in the founding of Rhode Island Hospital (he even presided over the opening ceremonies of the institution in 1868). Upon his death in 1889, Gammell left $10,000 to Brown to fund the acquisition of a collection of American history texts.
In honor of her late husband, Gammell's widow presented this portrait to Brown in 1890. The painting was executed by Hugo Breull, who was born in 1854, in Saalfeld, Germany, and who spent most of his career until his death in 1910 as an artist in Rhode Island. Breull studied with such luminaries of the art world as the famous impressionist William Merritt Chase and with the head of the National Academy, Lemuel Everett Wilmarth. Despite this impressive pedigree, Breull's portrait of Gammell did not impress Professor Gammell's daughter?she called it "an inferior likeness and poor work of art"!