Beyond a Cincinnati Legacy: The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fleischmann III, Part I

Provenance:

Purportedly drawn from life by the artist in 1794, Boston, Massachusetts;

by descent within the Jenks family to the artist's great-great-great niece, Edith Louise Jenks (1885-1970), Middleborough, Massachusetts.

The USS Constitution, also known as "Old Ironsides," is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world and was among the six original frigates that formed the new United States Navy, per the Naval Act signed by President George Washington in 1794. She was launched from Edmund Hartt's Boston shipyard and is best remembered for her notable contributions to the War of 1812, including the capture of 33 British merchant vessels and the sound defeat of four British warships.

A sister ship to the Constitution, the frigate Constellation was built under the supervision of Revolutionary War privateer captain Thomas Truxtun at David Stodder’s shipyard in Baltimore. Upon her launch, the Constellation was tasked with protecting American merchant vessels in the Caribbean during the undeclared Quasi-War with France and staving off pirate attacks during the Barbary Wars.

Curiously the inscription here is somewhat at odds with the historical record, as both warships were launched in 1797. While their construction may have been underway in 1794, the two vessels identified in the painting were built in two different cities, so a view of the two together at this time would have likely been contrived, provided that the date was recorded correctly.

According to Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, Henry Goldthwaite Jenks (1776-1801) was one of twelve children born to Samuel and Mary Haynes Jenks. His father, Samuel, had served in the Provincial Army in the French and Indian War in 1758 and as a captain in the Ticonderoga campaign of 1760. He is recorded as working as a blacksmith in several cities in Massachusetts, including Newtown and Boston, and owned his own foundry, Samuel Jenks and Son, Blacksmiths and Bellows Makers, in Boston by 1789.

Henry Goldthwaite Jenks died in Cambridge in 1801. He was survived by his younger brother, the Reverend William Jenks (1778-1866), whose eldest son Joseph William Jenks (1808-1884), is likely the author of the primary verso inscription. He married Anna Maria Goldsbury (1814-1886) on November 3, 1842, in Boston, and the couple had two sons, one of whom, Joseph Jenks (1845-1907), fathered a daughter named Edith Louise  Jenks, possibly the author of the second inscription, in 1885.