Errant portrait finds a home in N.C. museum

May 6--RALEIGH -- The man in the painting is self-assured. Dressed in sober business attire, he has a quill pen at the ready and a ledger book beneath his elbow.

The portrait of John Burgwin, painted by John Singleton Copley in the 18th century, was hung this week at the N.C. Museum of Art as something of a homecoming. It slipped out of the state's hands more than three decades ago and had been all but forgotten.

And with the painting has come a mystery, carefully brushed into Burgwin's stately pose.

"No work of art is ever what it seems, at least at first glance," said John Coffey, the museum's deputy art director. "All good pictures are haunted."

Burgwin was an Englishman who settled in Wilmington and built a mercantile and shipping business, and he later married into substantial plantation holdings. He held several high political positions with the first governors of colonial North Carolina.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, he spent much of it in London, loyal to the king, perhaps, conflicted about his allegiances or unsure how the hostilities would play out.

He returned after the war, reclaimed his property and brought back a portrait commissioned from Copley, America's first great artist. Copley had left Boston in 1775 to advance his career in London and often painted visiting Americans.

This painting, apparently done in 1783, was one of Copley's few portraits of Southerners.

The Burgwin family did well in North Carolina (his son changed the spelling of the family name to Burgwyn, perhaps to embrace their Welsh roots). From the fifth generation, W.H.S. Burgwyn II was a judge, state senator, University of North Carolina trustee and solicitor before his death in 1977.

In 1916, the judge loaned the painting to the state history museum, known then as the Hall of History, in Raleigh. Some surviving relatives remember seeing it there when they were children and recall that it was always a proud part of the family's history. It remained there for decades, and in a bit of foreshadowing it made an appearance at the art museum for the state's 300th anniversary celebration in 1963.

Then Judge Burgwyn abruptly took the painting back. It had been there so long that the museum staff thought it belonged to the state.

Margaret Cooley, 86, of Woodland, the judge's daughter and only living child, says her recollection is that her father got mad when he found the painting in storage in the museum's basement. Don Pratt of Asheville, who married a Burgwyn cousin, says a representative of a New York City gallery had spotted the painting in the history museum.

"Of course we were disappointed they wanted to withdraw it," H.G. Jones, retired state archives and history director, said Friday. "But we understood because at that time it appeared to be worth a great deal of money."

The gallery told the family the painting might fetch as much as $1 million, Pratt said, and offered to restore it and split the profit if it could sell it. Burgwyn transferred ownership to his four children and in 1969 sent the painting to New York.

"It shocked me," Cooley said Friday.

The task of keeping track of the painting eventually fell to Pratt and his wife, as they lived in nearby Connecticut. For whatever reason -- maybe the asking price was too high, maybe portraits of unknown men weren't desirable -- the portrait never sold.

"To our knowledge, after 35 years they never received an offer," Pratt said. "It's hard for me to believe."

A puzzling inscription

Five years ago, the survivors decided to donate the painting to a North Carolina institution. The gallery eventually agreed to sell its interest back to the family for $40,000, the original price it paid in 1969. The family offered the picture to the art museum, and the board of directors accepted it in September.

Coffey, who is also curator of American art, had never heard of the painting.

"It never entered my head that Copley would have painted a North Carolinian," he said. "But you take what drops into your lap and hope it's real."

Coffey did more than hope. He started looking for all the documentation he could find. The family genealogy provided a nearly bulletproof record of the painting's ownership. But one thing about the painting struck him as odd: An inscription on the ledger book reads, "The State of North Carolina Public Acct."

"It just didn't look right," Coffey said.

It was awkward and not at all typical of Copley's style. More notably, if the portrait was painted in 1783, there was no state of North Carolina -- it was still a colony. Burgwin never held a government office for the state.

"One of the operating theories is that it was added by Burgwin himself, or more likely one of his descendants, in order to maybe clean up the reputation of Burgwin as a Tory," Coffey said.

But an examination by the museum's conservation department found no dirt or varnish between the book's white paint and the black writing, as would be expected if it had been added later.

Additional tests will be done.

"It's an interesting puzzle," Coffey said. "I don't know if we'll ever resolve it."

What he is certain of is the significance of this addition to the museum's collection, which includes two earlier Copley paintings. Its monetary value is uncertain. An appraisal done for the family last year put the value at $325,000, Pratt said. That would be far less than the other two Copleys.

Coffey says its worth to the museum is priceless.

"When you think of the great portrait painters in American art -- Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent and John Singleton Copley -- this is the only North Carolinian painted by those three. It's really important for this painting to stay in North Carolina."

Family members will reunite at the museum in Raleigh on May 13, when the painting will be formally unveiled. About 60 relatives from across the country are expected, and Coffey will work the crowd trying to solve the riddle of the inscription.

He would really like to get his hands on Burgwin's missing diary.

"I'm hoping somebody there has heard some rumor of it," Coffey said.

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