Alonzo Chappel – The Infamous Artist of Artist Lake – Talk by Suzanne Johnson
By LINDA LEUZZI
A particular landscape can, at times, beckon as the headquarters for a life’s work. For 19th century artist Alonzo Chappel, that pull was tapped when Chappel saw Glover’s Pond at Middle Island after Chappel traveled east from Brooklyn looking for a restful home to work and settle in. He purchased 95 acres in 1869 and about two years later, established a home with his second wife on the east end of Glover’s Pond, eventually selling it to his brother-in-law and establishing a Swiss-style house surrounded by fruit trees there while encouraging family members and other artists to move into a kind of artist complex. The lake eventually became Artist Lake.
The house is gone; now there’s a Fairfield Village at Middle Island apartments on its perimeter.
But his residence at Artist Laketook place after he had already achieved a steady trajectory of success. Born in 1828 in The Bowery, Chappel, whose parents encouraged his early talents, entered his “The Father of His Country,” of George Washington in the American Institute Fair at age 9. By age 12, he could be seen sitting at his easel set on the New York sidewalks attracting customers as he sold paintings for $5 or $10 each to those passing who agreed to sit for a portrait. He was listed in the New York City Directory as an artist by age 16 and was charging $25 for a portrait by then. Besides his portraiture business, he added stage scenery, studied costumes and received a commission to paint scenes in Cuba. He had a number of exhibitions at places that included the American Art-Union, Brooklyn Art Association and National Academy of Design. He helped form the Brooklyn Art Union and Brooklyn Academy of Design. While he lived on Fulton Street in Brooklyn with his young first wife, he associated with other artists and writers; Walt Whitman was a good friend.
But his longtime association with Henry Johnson of Martin, Johnson and company that produced illustrated publications on history was his most prolific and lucrative time. A kind of Norman Rockwell of his day, whose work was particularly famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers, the publishers hired engravers to translate Chappel’s work for their monthly issues and books on American history from colonial times to the Civil War. He worked for the company from 1856 to his retirement in 1885; much of it produced at Artist Lake.
Chappel was well-liked and lived in Middle Island for 20 years, but there were sorrows; his first wife died earlier leaving him with four small children although he later remarried. But the big tragedy occurred when an epileptic young black man appeared to threaten him at his home and Chappel shot him. Chappel was heartsick about it and died five years later at Artist Lake in 1887.
The Longwood Library owns hundreds of engravings of Chappel, and while he is known for his arresting scenes of pivotal historical moments of American history as well as portraitures, most of his paintings, oil on brown oiled paper, didn’t survive more than 30 years.
But several did. The Chicago Historical Society owns 17 of Chappel’s paintings. “The Battle of Long Island, 1776” hangs at The Brooklyn Historical Society. And the National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans purchased many of his full-length portraits. The engraving of Chappel’s “Washington’s Fairwell to His Officers at Fraunces Tavern,” resides, appropriately, at the Fraunces Tavern Museum.