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Arthur Prentice Rugg, a chief justice of the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial
Court, was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian
Society in
1908. He was made a councillor the following year and in 1919
became vice-president.
He served in this position under his friend and associate Calvin
Coolidge
before being elected president of the Society in 1933.(1) Rugg was
an
intellectual, interested in the history of Massachusetts and the
legal
issues surrounding the formation of the nation. His position as
chief
justice brought him into contact with powerful state officials and
he
used his connections to promote the objectives of the Society. His
obituary
in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society states,
'[Rugg]
was deeply concerned in the Society's affairs and loyal to its
reputation.
With a mind highly attuned to the value of historical research he
felt
deep sympathy with the objects of the Society and strove at every
opportunity
to advance its cause.'(2)
Rugg graduated from Amherst College in 1883 and completed his
advanced
degree at Boston University before being admitted to the bar in
1886.
He set up his law practice in Worcester and soon became involved
in local
politics. He was a Worcester city solicitor and the assistant
district
attorney for Worcester County before being appointed to the
Supreme Judicial
Court in 1911. Rugg wrote nearly 3,000 opinions while serving on
the bench,
including cases concerning minimum wage laws, unemployment
legislation,
and issues surrounding the freedom of the press.(3)
Rugg also wrote essays and orations on American history, many of
which
he presented before the historical associations to which he
belonged.
He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the
Colonial
Society of Massachusetts, and the New England Historic
Genealogical Society.
Copies of his papers and speeches, including his 'Farm Life in
Colonial
New England' (1893), and 'Abraham Lincoln in Worcester' (1909),
are preserved
in the book collection of the American Antiquarian Society. In
1920 Rugg
presented a paper before the Society titled 'A Famous Colonial
Litigation,
the Case between Richard Sherman and Captain Robert Keayne, 1642'
that
examined the early precedents for the state's bicameral
legislature.(4)
This portrait of Rugg was painted the year after his death. It
was completed
by Henry B. Chatterton, a commercial artist from Lancaster,
Massachusetts,
who worked from photographs of the Chief Justice.(5) Born in
Wisconsin,
Chatterton briefly attended art school in Illinois before settling
in
New York City where he worked for a commercial art house. He did
not see
his lack of a formal artistic education as a detriment and noted,
'[I]f
I have anything to boast of it is the fact that I have not had
much schooling
in art or done the usual thing which an artist is supposed to do,
that
is, attend art schools and send work to great exhibitions.'(6)
Chatterton
supplemented his income by painting portraits. In the 1920s, he
painted
a set of seventy small portraits of local dignitaries for the
Lancaster
town hall and he often painted high-ranking military personnel at
nearby
Fort Devens.
Chatterton was engaged by the American Antiquarian Society in
December
1939 to produce a full-sized image of Rugg for the Society's
collection
of the portraits of its past presidents. He delivered the finished
portrait
at the end of the month and Clarence Brigham, the Society's
librarian,
wrote to the artist saying, 'It is a splendid likeness and
preserves graphically
the expression in Judge Rugg's face, with which for so many years
I have
been familiar.... I think that you have done an excellent piece of
work
in painting this portrait.(7)
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1) Clarence S.
Brigham, 'Arthur Prentice
Rugg,' Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 50 (October
1938):
184. Rugg was influential in encouraging Coolidge to serve as
president
of the Society. Brigham states, '[Rugg's] friendship with the late
Calvin
Coolidge was one of the notable incidences of his life. Graduated
from the
same college, brought into frequent associations in State affairs,
and holding
similar high ideals of public service, the two men had many bonds of
intimacy.'
2) Brigham, 'Arthur Prentice Rugg,' 183.
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, s.v. "Arthur
Prentice
Rugg."
3) Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 30 (October
1920): 217-50.
4) See photographs of Rugg in the American Antiquarian
Society's Graphic Arts
collection. The Society also owns a c. 1933 lithograph of Rugg by
the New
York portraitist Albert Sterner (1863-1946), which is similar in
pose to
the painting.
5) Harry B. Chatterton to Clarence Brigham, 1939, American
Antiquarian Society
Archives.
6) Clarence S. Brigham to Harry B. Chatterton, January 3,
1940, American Antiquarian
Society Archives. The December 29, 1939 receipt for the painting,
totaling
$200, is preserved in the Society's Archives. In a February 1944
letter
to Brigham, Chatterton recalled how the portrait of Rugg helped
boost his
reputation as a painter, 'I was not sorry [that] I did my best on
the painting,
though at a reduced price, for the sake of the help expected from
its reputation.'
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