Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Major Francis Nichols, ca. 1780–83

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Major Francis Nichols, ca. 1780–83,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.3106.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Major Francis Nichols, ca. 1780–83,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.3106.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Irish-born Francis Nichols (ca. 1737–1812) was one of thousands of young men who immigrated to America and enlisted in volunteer militia companies during the colonies’ war for independence from England. Nichols’s bravery during battle and as a prisoner of war during an ill-fated attempt to capture Quebec City in 1776 resulted in his promotion to captain, a role he performed for the 9th Regiment of the 1st Pennsylvania Line.¹ Within this regiment, he saw action in Brandywine (1777), Germantown (1777), and Valley Forge (1777–1778), quickly prompting his promotion to major, and he served as one of the scouts who kept General George Washington apprised of British activity along the front. One such effort possibly facilitated an attack on the British rear guard as they left Monmouth.² This was Nichols’s last fight; he resigned from the army in 1779 when he was passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel. Returning to Philadelphia, he went into the mercantile business and later served as a government contractor, supplying arms to American troops.³ It was during his transition to civilian life, or not long after, that he sat for this portrait miniature by Charles Willson Peale.⁴

Peale’s characteristic late style, distinguished by meticulously rendered features and fashions, solid modeling, and deep jewel tones—as opposed to the lighter palette and airy handling of media by English miniaturists like Richard Cosway—may have appealed to Nichols, who did not suffer fools.⁵ Nichols’s bright blue eyes, framed by dark, thick brows, and his wry smile convey a confident man who considered himself a worthy subject for Peale, who was highly fêted for the series of full-length portraits of General George Washington that he began in 1779 (the original portrait is at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). A print of Nichols was likely made after the Peale miniature and was possibly commissioned by the nascent Society of Cincinnati, formed by a group of officers from the Continental Army to ensure their financial, fraternal, and patriotic rights (Fig. 1).⁶ Nichols was a founding member. The print bears a stamp at the upper right corner with the society’s motto, “Omni Relinot Servat RempB,” an abbreviation for Omnia Relinquit Servare Rem Publicam, or “He gave up everything to serve his country.” The date 1783 appears underneath, signaling the end of the war and the latest possible date for the miniature. Although the print is very similar to the Peale miniature, Nichols’s head appears without the slight tilt, and he meets our gaze directly. Although Nichols never married, he fathered two children with two different women, so perhaps the miniature was not only to remember him but to commemorate his visage for future generations.⁷

When the American Revolution ended in 1783, many of the men who were successful in the war, including Nichols, moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a town about forty miles northwest of Philadelphia, with large homes constructed by John Potts and his sons.⁸ In 1793, Nichols purchased Potts’s home and two hundred acres of surrounding land, and he worked as a gentleman farmer, growing and selling grain and charging for the use of his mills.⁹ Nichols’s post-service experience furnishing arms resulted in his later appointment to Brigadier General of the Militia Brigade of Montgomery County on August 12, 1795.¹⁰ He died on February 14, 1812, and his memory remained strong within the hearts of veterans of the American Revolution.¹¹

Notes

1. Nichols kept a diary of his tenure as prisoner of war from January to September 1776. See Francis Nichols, Thomas H. Montgomery, Christopher Green, and Abdiel McAllister, “Diary of Lieutenant Francis Nichols, of Colonel William Thompson’s Battalion of Pennsylvania Riflemen, January to September, 1776,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 20, no. 4 (1896): 504–14.

2. On June 26, 1778, Nichols informed Washington that he went “under civer [cover] into thire incampment [sic] and found all the army moved But the Rear Guard,” and that according to two “Disarters,” the “enemy is to halt at Monmouth Court house.” The Continental Army attacked the British rear guard two days later as it was leaving Monmouth, possibly in response to Nichols’s report. “Revolutionary War Hero Makes his Mark and Home in Pottstown,” The Mercury, November 1, 2014 (updated September 24, 2021), https://www.pottsmerc.com/2014/11/01/revolutionary-war-hero-makes-his-mark-and-home-in-pottstown/.

3. On March 9, 1779, shortly before his resignation, Nichols was balloted and approved to become a Freemason. He joined Lodge No. 2 in Philadelphia, which was the “patriot” lodge and was considered a “nest of rebels” by the British before the war. Daniel A. Graham, General Francis Nichols (1737–1812), Pottstown’s Other Revolutionary War Hero: A Biographical Sketch (Montrose, PA: Daniel A Graham, 2011), 10.

4. Francis Nichols does not appear in the list of sitters noted in Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42, no. 1 (1952): 1–369. Peale mentions Nichols’s payment in a letter dated February 21, 1786; see Charles Willson Peale, The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, ed. Lillian B. Miller, Sidney Hart, and Toby A. Appel (New Haven: Yale University Press for the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1983), 1:440.

5. Nichols had a fiery temper, and in September 1782 he was tried and convicted of assault and battery against a gentleman named Joseph Gardner. Nichols was fined fifty pounds. John Dwight Kilbourne, Virtutis Praemium: The Men who Founded the State Society of Cincinnati of Pennsylvania (Rockport, ME: Picton Press, 1998), 1:731.

6. For more on the Society of Cincinnati and its formation, see Edwin A. Hoey, “A ‘New and Strange Order of Men,’” American Heritage 19, no. 5 (August 1968): https://www.americanheritage.com/new-and-strange-order-men.

7. Major Nichols’s marital history is unclear: one source gives his wife’s name as Elizabeth Stimbing, or Stemberg. She evidently predeceased the Major, as no wife is named in his will. His two daughters were born in Pottstown: Anna Maria, whose mother remains unknown, born about 1795; and Harriet, born about 1804, whose mother was Nichols’s housekeeper, Esther Parker. Both girls lived with their father, and he acknowledged them in his will. See “Revolutionary War Hero Makes his Mark and Home in Pottstown”; see also Kilbourne, Virtutis Praemium, 728–33.

8. “Revolutionary War Hero Makes his Mark and Home in Pottstown.”

9. He also began speculating land, acquiring nearly 3,500 acres himself and even larger territories with a group of investors. See “Revolutionary War Hero Makes his Mark and Home in Pottstown.”

10. Kilbourne, Virtutis Praemium, 732.

11. In 1891, during an Independence Day celebration, a fellow veteran proposed a toast: “‘To the memory of General Francis Nichols, his surviving companions in the expedition to Quebec can attest to his bravery, his acquaintances will long remember his hospitality.’ All those present ‘drank standing.’” See “Revolutionary War Hero Makes his Mark and Home in Pottstown.”

Susan Miller Dunglison (1837–1901), South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by 1892 [1];

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] The miniature was listed as the property of Mrs. W. L. Dunglison when it was illustrated in Campbell’s 1892 book. She was married to William Leadam Dunglison (1832–1891) and her maiden name was Richards.

Charles Willson Peale, Lt. Col. Francis Nichols, ca. 1783, mezzotint on paper, dimensions unknown, The Society of Cincinnati, The Robert Charles Lawrence Fergusson Collection.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 221, (repro.), as General Francis Nichols.

John Hugh Campbell, History of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick (Philadelphia: Hibernian Society, 1892), 127, (repro.), as Francis Nichols.

Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 2 (December 1958): 16, (repro.), as General Francis Nichols.

Charles Coleman Sellers and Charles Willson Peale, “Charles Willson Peale with Patron and Populace: A Supplement to ‘Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale’ with a Survey of his Work in Other Genres,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59, no. 3 (1969): no. 102, pp. 74, 138, (repro.), as Francis Nichols.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 221, pp. 2, 73, (repro.), as General Francis Nichols.

Robert Morris, Elmer James Ferguson, and John Catanzariti, Papers of Robert Morris, 1784–1781 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 390, (repro.), as Francis Nichols.