WILTSE, Captain Gilbert Conwall
Description:
Bust-length, in uniform with gold epaulettes and his hat under his arm. Oil on canvas, signed upper right.
Location:
Present whereabouts unknown.
Bibliography:
Evening News, New York, January 16, 1892.
Notes:
The portrait was exhibited in the Artist’s studio, 58, West 57th Street, New York, January 12 & 13, 1892.
Gilbert Wiltse, was born in Binghampton, New York, on November 26, 1838, into a family of Walloon and French descent. The Wiltsee family applied through Sir Dudley Carleton to his Majesty King James I of England for land in Virginia and dispersion to the family. He was distantly related to Chauncey M. Depew which probably explains how Muller-Ury came to paint him.
Gilbert Wiltse joined the navy as a midshipman in 1859, was Lieutenant in 1861 and Commander in 1865. He served with distinction during the Civil War and was given command of the Swartara in the North Atlantic Squadron in 1884-5, when he conveyed several million dolars worth of silver coin from New Orleans to New York. He was promoted to Captain on January 20, 1887 and took command of the Boston in 1891. The portrait must have been painted around this time. During the revolution in Hawaii his last service ended when on January 16, 1893 he gave orders for his men to raise the Stars and Stripes over Honolulu, an instruction which President Cleveland countermanded. He was said to have burst into tears when this was done. Since his two year’s duty at sea was just then completed he was put upon waiting orders and returned to Washington and subsequently to his family in New York, where he lived at 42, East 53rd Street. He died aged 54 of “congestion of the brain” on Wednesday, April 26, 1893. He was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, after a funeral in St. Andrew’s Church New York City on April 29, 1893.
He was married to Sarah Steele, daughter of Franklin Steele of Washington, and had two sons and two daughters, Anne S Wiltse and Sarah Crandall Wiltse who married Mr Ernest Krause on 20 February 1900 at St Thomas’s Church in New York and was given away by her brother Franklin S. Wiltse (who was married on 28 November 1911 to Mary Wood of Philadelphia).
Bibliography:
Jerome Wiltsee, Jr., A Genealogical and Psychological Memoir of Philippe Maton Wiltsee and his Descendents with a Historical Introduction Referring to the Wiltsee Nation and its Colonies, Part First, Privately Printed, New York, 1908. Index by Mrs Myrta Wilsey Burwash, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, 1940.
