Reverend Jonas Coe

Ammi Phillips, an itinerant and self-trained artist, served a prosperous middle-class clientele in New York State and northwestern Connecticut. Reverend Coe, for nearly thirty years the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, was an important patron. This is one of Phillips’s largest portraits of a single subject, and the scale of the figure and his dominating placement high in the picture space reflect Coe’s standing in the community. Phillips depicted Coe at a worship service, reading from scripture. One writer described Coe as “great in character rather than in intellect, wit, or eloquence.”[1] The minister’s open right hand and the fingers of his left (which mark the place of an earlier passage) suggest a pedantic preaching style; his dour expression augurs stern and lengthy sermons. But Phillips’s decorative manner mediates the apparent severity of Coe’s character: his stock is crisply painted, its pleats forming a captivating zigzag pattern, and the red drapery covering the pulpit cushion is punctuated by a staccato rhythm of gold tacks, heavy fringe, and enormous tassels.

Notes

1. E. H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1864), 465. Italics in original.

This text was adapted from Gerald W. R. Ward et al., American Folk (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001).