Biographic:

 Robert Street was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in the year 1796. Born the grandson of an English immigrant who had been disinherited through no fault of his own and completely without justification, he began a long and distinguised career as an artist.

As such, his painting is undocumented until around the year 1815, when he exhibited a work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

He was a regular contributor there and exhibited on and off right up until about 1861.

It is interesting to note that many of his paintings have since been lost or destroyed.

Between 1821 and 1823 he achieved simple but reasonable success by exhibiting four large biblical subject scenes (ie: The Infuriated Maniac Assaulting his Keeper) He continued to paint along these lines and exhibit a number of locations in Philadelphia and in several other American cities.

In 1824 his luck changed after he painted a portrait of President Andrew Jackson, now held at the Sedalia Public Library, Missouri and he went on to exhibit three historical paintings in Washington, D.C . Later that year he ceased painting historical subjects and began to concentrate on portraiture as it obviously met the bills. In 1834, he painted a distinctive portrait of Joseph Bonaparte, the oldest brother of Napoleon, who was living on an estate in Bordentown, New Jersey. (Borden being the founder family of that city a whose family are depicted above.)

Although Street was chiefly a portraitist, he also painted landscapes and still life subjects,and excelled in the near impossibe task of posthumous portraiture.

In 1834 the writer Dunlap got it all wrong when he reported that "Mr Street of Philadelphia, aimed at historical composition and died in Washington city."

After receiving a brusque letter in response to his innacuracies from Street, Dunlap published a correcetion notice in the New York Mirror (28 February 1835) announcing that Street was alive and well and rather than dead, wasindeed "prosperously pursuing his art in Philadelphia."

Street was an active member of the Artists' Fund Society and organized an exhibition of 170 paintings, held at the Artists' Fund Hall in Philadelphia in 1840, alongside his personal collection of "old masters," including Van Dyke, Rubens and Carracci. He also exhibited at the Apollo Association in New York and at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Robert Street had six children by three wives. His sons, Ruben Correggio, Austin del Sarto, Theophilus and Claude Lorraine, all became artists in Philadelphia.

He died in Philadelphia in 1865.

D.Freeman

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