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Online Library of Selected Images -- Picture Data

Photo #: KN-582 (Color) -- (Extended caption)

Quartermaster Dick Libby, USN

Oil on canvas, 30" x 26", by Charles O. Cole (1814-c.1856). Painted circa 1834.
See below for more information on this painting.

Painting in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum Collection. Transferred from the Boston Naval Library and Institute, 1921.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph.

Online Image: 89KB; 585 x 765 pixels

Reproductions of this image may also be available through the National Archives photographic reproduction system as Photo # 428-KN-582

 


In "Naval Uniforms", published in the "United Service" magazine (Vol. 2, pp 750-751) in 1880, George Henry Preble writes:

"I know of but two portraits of our old sailors in naval costume extant, and these are old Dick Libby and Fred Boyer, both quartermasters, well known to our older Naval officers, whose portraits are preserved in the Naval Library and Institute of Boston, and were exibited in the Centennial Exhibition.
Libby, the type of a bluff, mahogany-faced old sea-dog, has on a blue jacket with the taped collar. The portrait was painted by C.O. Cole, in Portland, in 1834, where Dick was spending his savings after a cruise in the Mediterranean in the Delaware, 74.
Fred Boyer is dressed in a white shirt with nankeen collar, and blue trousers, and has in his hand a black tarpaulin hat. His portrait was painted by Flagg - a brother of the commander by that name - while Boyer was a quartermaster on board the receiving ship Ohio in Boston somewhere about 1840-45. His character is best told by the description under his portrait, 'Twenty years in the Navy. Never drunk on duty - never sober on liberty.'".

Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

If you want higher resolution reproductions than this digital image, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."

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30 March 2000