Sayles, William Francis (1824 - 1894)
Role: TrusteeDates: 1879 - 1894
Portrait Location: Sayles Hall 100
Artist: Healy, George P.A. (1813 - 1894)
Portrait Date: 1889
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 52" x 76"
Framed Dimensions:
Brown Portrait Number: 63
Brown Historical Property Number: 2242
William Francis Sayles was born in Pawtucket, the son of builder, businessman, and financier Clark Sayles and his wife Mary Olney Sayles. Through his mother, he claimed descent from Roger Williams and Thomas Olney, two of Providence's original thirteen "planters." Completing his education at the age of eighteen at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., Sayles entered one of Providence's merchant firms as a bookkeeper. Five years later, after being promoted to head the firm's finances, he left to form his own cotton bleachery company. Despite having no previous knowledge of the textile industry, within seven years Sayles' concern was handling two-thirds of all the fine-grade cotton cloth manufactured in the United States. Along with his brother, Frederick Sayles, he founded other textile mills and built a railroad connecting the industrial region of northern Rhode Island to New York and New Haven. Through his reputation as a great and successful industrialist, Sayles was carried into public office, serving as state senator in 1875-76 and as president of the Pawtucket Free Library for twelve years. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of Brown University in 1879 and remained on the board until his death. A year prior to joining the Board, he had donated $150,000 to the University for the erection of a building in memory of his son, William Clark Sayles, who had died in his sophomore year at Brown in 1876. Sayles Hall was completed in 1881.
George P. A. Healy was a well-known American portraitist and historical painter from Boston. Healy had studied in Paris and later lived and worked in many cities of Europe and America, residing in Chicago at the time of his death. His reputation as a fine portraitist led to a commission from King Louis Philippe I in France in 1842 for portraits of the American presidents. As the king was overthrown six years later, the fifteen completed works were never delivered and now hang in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. His sitters include Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Pope Pius IX, and Louisa May Alcott. The University commissioned Sayles's portrait following the completion of Sayles Hall. An unspotted engraver's mistake caused the brass plaque of both this painting and the one of Sayles's son to read "Request of William Sayles" instead of "Bequest of William Sayles."