Charles Callahan Perkins

Charles Callahan Perkins (March 1, 1823 – August 25, 1886) was an art critic, author, organizer of cultural activities, and an influential friend of design and of music in Boston. Biography Charles C. Perkins was born in Boston on March 1, 1823, to James and Eliza Greene (Callahan) Perkins. His father, descended from Edmund Perkins who emigrated to New England in 1650, was a wealthy and philanthropic merchant. His mother was a gracious, cultivated woman. The family was wealthy. Perkins was the great nephew of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, who founded the Perkins shipping empire J. & T.H Perkins with Charles' grandfather James. Perkins attended several schools before entering Harvard College, where he found the prescribed academic course irksome. He graduated in 1843. He had previously drawn and painted and went abroad soon after graduation to study art. In Rome he became friendly with and encouraged the sculptor Thomas Crawford, then struggling economically. In 1846, Perkins took a studio at Paris, where he had instruction from Ary Scheffer. Later he pursued studies in the history of Christian art in Leipzig. Returning to Paris he took up etching with Bracquemond and Lalanne. He made many etchings to illustrate his own books. Perkins, independently wealthy, devoted his life to interpreting the art of others. In 1850-51 and from 1875 until his death he was president of the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston, and sometimes conducted their concerts and wrote music the ensemble performed. (The German publisher Breitkopf and Härtel, the world's oldest music publishing house, issued Perkins's Piano Trio and two string quartets in 1854 and 1855 respectively; Perkins's compositions were the first works by an American ever published by that firm.) He married on June 12, 1855, Frances Davenport Bruen, daughter of the Rev. Matthias Bruen, of New York. They gave many concerts and recitals at their home. Perkins was the largest subscriber to the construction of the Boston Music Hall, for which he also contributed the great bronze statue of Beethoven, modeled by his friend Crawford, which since 1902 has stood in the entrance hall of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston. An invitation extended to Perkins in 1857 to give some lectures at Trinity College, Hartford, on "The Rise and Progress of Painting," started him as a lecturer. He possessed charm and magnetism on the platform.