General Charles J. Paine

Charles Jackson Paine was about 70 when Sargent painted him, and the canvas is dated 1904 in the upper left corner. Two very different careers lay behind the quiet man in the dark suit. In the Civil War he commanded a division of regiments of the United States Colored Troops, and after the attack at New Market Heights outside Richmond in September 1864, 14 Black soldiers of that division received the Medal of Honor. Two decades later he was the most successful yachtsman in America. British challengers came for the America's Cup, the trophy American yachts had held since 1851, three years running, and each time the defender was a boat backed by Paine and designed by Edward Burgess of Boston, Puritan in 1885, Mayflower in 1886 and Volunteer in 1887. All three won. Sargent painted him seated, his hands folded, his white moustache and bald head lit against a dark ground. The portrait hung in Paine's house in Weston, outside Boston, until he died in 1916, and his heirs gave it to the museum in 1954.