In the mid-1850s John Russell Bartlett, Secretary of State for the state of Rhode Island and library advisor to John Carter Brown, spearheaded a campaign to acquire the likenesses of war heroes, titans of industry, and benefactors to the University. Many of these portraits were copies, newly painted from originals still owned by the families of the subjects. For some of this work Bartlett employed the young Martin Johnson Heade, who, struggling to establish himself, supported himself by creating large framed versions of portrait miniatures. In 1857 Bartlett wrote to the Secretary of the Corporation of Brown University:
Sir: I am directed by the gentlemen at whose expense the portraits of the distinguished men of Rhode Island have been presented, to place them at the disposal of the Corporation of the University, with the desire that they may be arranged in some suitable hall where at all times they may be accessible.
As several of the members of the Corporation were the very gentlemen who subscribed to Bartlett's appeal for funds to acquire these paintings, the portraits were promptly installed in Rhode Island Hall. In 1867 Reuben Guild, the University Librarian, first described these accumulated pictures as a "collection," and articulated just what, collectively, they had come to signify to Brown:
The collection of portraits in Rhode Island Hall now comprises thirty-one, many of them painted from life. They represent men of all ranks and professions, and include not only benefactors, officers, and graduates of the college, but also soldiers, statesmen, and divines, who have distinguished themselves in the annals of Rhode Island….An enterprise so auspiciously begun, should be continued from year to year, until the Collection shall at least approach more nearly to completion.
The ideal that the Brown portrait collection might one day be complete was superseded by the reality of an ever-growing body of paintings. In 1875 the New England Historical and Genealogical Register published a list of thirty-six painted likenesses, four portrait busts, and a bronze portrait medallion at Brown. Though a new exhibition room was built onto Rhode Island Hall in 1874, the portrait collection soon outgrew that building, and was moved to Sayles Hall when it was built in 1881.
Information on this page indebted to the Brown University Portrait Collection (https://dl.lib.brown.edu/portraits/intro.html)
