Hopkins, Esek (1755-1802)
Role: first Commodore of the Continental NavyDates: 1775-1778
Portrait Location: Unlocated
Artist: Heade, Martin Johnson (1819-1904)
Portrait Date: 1857
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Framed Dimensions:
Brown Portrait Number: 306
Brown Historical Property Number: 0
One of the first portraits acquired by Brown University, a posthumous likeness of Esek Hopkins, was commissioned by the university in 1857 at the height of Hopkins’s reputation as the first commodore of the American navy and displayed in a place of pride in Brown’s portrait gallery in Rhode Island Hall. He was further memorialized by the City of Providence, which preserved his farm as a house museum and named the Esek Hopkins School in his honor.
In more recent years Hopkins’s illustrious 19th century reputation has been reconsidered. In 1764 Hopkins was commissioned by the Providence merchants and traders Nicholas Brown and Company to command the ship Sally on a slaving voyage to West Africa to acquire slaves to sell in the West Indies. Although Hopkins’s direct involvement in the African slave trade is repugnant to modern sensibilities, in his own lifetime he was criticized primarily for the fact that at least 109 out of the 196 captive Africans on his ship died before they could be sold. A longstanding friendship between Hopkins and the Brown family cushioned the disappointment of the voyage—Moses Brown wrote in a letter to Hopkins and the Sally on November 16th, 1765 after he heard about the disastrous voyage that he was just grateful that his friend survived the misfortunate journey.
Hopkins's reputation revived in 1775 when he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy. In 1776, when bad weather, sickness on board, and the separation of two ships from the fleet made proceeding according orders seem unlikely, Hopkins took it upon himself to take his fleet to the Bahamas to restore the Navy’s munitions. While his acquiring the stores of gunpowder was applauded as a success, on their journey home Hopkins and his fleet let the British ship Glasgow escape near Long Island. This incident was a source of frustration that festered in Congress, which was further irritated by Hopkins’s inability to employ the Continental Navy’s fleet as sickness and competing opportunities for privateering depleted the ranks.
Hopkins was discharged from the Navy in 1778 after his reputation was further assailed by allegations of unpatriotic sentiment, cursing, and mistreatment of prisoners. Hopkins sued for libel, and although James Manning, the president of the college, testified in support of his character and conduct, the suit was unsuccessful. Esek Hopkins’ local reputation did not experience the same fall from grace that his national reputation did, and after the war he entered Rhode Island politics. Esek Hopkins, at the very least, is a resilient figure of Rhode Island’s history.
Esek Hopkins’s kin deserve some credit for his success; his brother Stephen Hopkins, who was the Governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was also the chairman of the Naval committee when Esek was asked to command the Continental fleet. Esek’s marriage to Desiree Burroughs, a member of a wealthy shipping and merchant family in Newport, R.I., also benefited his career. His friendship with the Brown family not only provided him economic opportunity, but also saved his reputation and prospects when his command resulted in a horrific loss of the lives on his slaving voyage. With the publication in 2006 of the Brown University’s “Report of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice” Hopkins’s reputation has been considerably revised.
Esek Hopkins has been identified as one of the figures in John Greenwood’s renowned painting "Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam," completed sometime between 1752 and 1758. Seated at the central table of the scene, Esek can be seen engaging in a lively conversation with Captain Nicholas Cooke (see BP 152.) The large eyes, facial proportions, hair and hat that characterize Esek in Greenwood’s satirical painting bear strong resemblance to his depiction in Brown University’s portrait. University Librarian Reuben Guild, in his 1867 "Collection of Portraits in Rhode Island Hall," noted that Esek Hopkins's likeness was the seventh portrait acquired by the University. In accompanying notes, Guild explained its relevance to Brown. It was "painted by Mr. M. J. Heade, of Providence, from a mezzotint engraving executed in London, and now in the possession of Mr. John Carter Brown.” Besides his business associations with the Nicholas Brown and Company, Esek Hopkins served as a trustee for twenty years of what was then called the College of Rhode Island. Another connection to Brown University was through his daughter Susan, who was married to the Rev. Dr. Maxcy, the second President of the College.
Before Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) established himself as one of the great Luminist landscape painters of 19th century America he made ends meet by taking on journeyman jobs, including making large-scale copies from existing miniature portraits. In the late 1850s he accepted several such commissions for the Brown University portrait gallery, including posthumous portraits of Moses Brown, Abraham Whipple, Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Wheaton. Though the print upon which this painting is based was published in Hopkins's lifetime, no true image of him is known to have been made from life, and the engraving--now in the collection of the John Carter Brown Library--is thought to be conjectural.
It is curious that a portrait of such a prominent subject by such a distinguished artist cannot now be located. It seems to have vanished from the Brown campus some time in the early 20th century. The last record we have of it is a photograph reproduced in Edward Field's 1898 hagiographic biography "Esek Hopkins, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolution, 1775-1778; master mariner, politician, brigadier general, naval officer and philanthropist," in which the caption to the photograph reads: "From a painting by Heade, in the possession of Brown University, Providence." It was at about this time that the Hopkins family homestead was furnished by the City of Providence for use as an historic house museum. One theory about its disappearance is that Brown's painting was lent to decorate the historic house, was forgotten over time, and was never returned. At any rate, when Brown's current system of numbering its portraits was begun in the 1930s, the Esek Hopkins portrait was not listed among them. In 2006 it was decided to include this lost painting retrospectively on the Brown portrait index as Brown portrait number 306.