Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-08-05
As Mr. Frothingham did not go to town today I concluded not to go in my own conveyance but to take a seat with Mr. Brooks. Accordingly we went down at his usual jog which is a little of the slowest. So that it was much after nine before I reached my Office.
Having done all my usual duties at the Office I thought I would go down to see how the pictures by Salmon would sell. They are all of them very pretty and went so very reasonably that I felt very much tempted to purchase. But I held in exceedingly well until the close, when one came up which I could not resist and immediately repented of the act. But it was too late.1
This was enough for a morning’s work, so I left for the Office where I sat only a short time before the hour arrived to go out with Mr. Brooks which I did. The Afternoon went off quietly at home reading Johnson’s Life of Parr which appears to me quite poor. Evening, reading French with my Wife. Mr. S. Swett and his daughter paid a short visit,2 otherwise not interrupted.
Robert Salmon, Scottish- or English-born painter of marine subjects, took up residence in Boston in 1828 and soon acquired a considerable local reputation (Groce and Wallace, Dict. Amer. Artists
). A large collection of his paintings, including views of Boston harbor, its shipping and the nearby islands, along with views of Algiers, of the bombardment of that city, and of the fleets preparing for action there, had been on exhibition in recent months at Wash-295ington Hall, Market Hall, and the Athenaeum Gallery. Seventy-five of the unsold oil paintings were put up for auction at the Julien Auction Room, corner of Milk and Congress streets, at 11 o’clock (Boston Patriot, 19 June, p. 2, col. 2; Boston Daily Advertiser, 5 Aug., p. 3, col. 5).
On Samuel Swett, a Boston merchant, see vol. 1:313.