Inherited Portraits

The majority of the portraits in this exhibition are inherited.  As a group they span more than two hundred years. These cherished painted or sculpted images of family members were initially created to celebrate personal events, including coming of age, marriage, and professional achievement.  They have been inherited by direct or collateral descendants, connecting their contemporary owners with past eras and past times, through family history and biography.  

Joseph Blackburn’s pair of portraits of Andrew Oliver Jr. and his wife Mary Lynde Oliver were painted in Boston in 1755, within a few years of their marriage, and Rembrandt Peale painted Catharine Peabody Gardner within a year of her marriage to John Lowell Gardner.  Elizabeth Bowdoin, Lady Temple, in contrast, was in her fiftiess when she commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint her portrait as a gift for her daughter, and the portraits of Latham Avery and his wife, attributed to Samuel F. B. Morse, may have been gifts to Avery’s brother.  

Some portraits, like that of James Brewster Cone of Hartford, Connecticut, were painted by local artists who are not well known today.  Others, including that of Ethel Mary Crocker, were painted by artists with an international reputation.  Her image was painted in Paris by Giovanni Boldini in 1906 when she was fifteen.  

The sculpture of Lucille Corcos by David Smith and the small image of Mamie Eisenhower by her husband, Dwight David Eisenhower, are portraits that celebrate the making of art.  Smith’s abstract sculpture depicts his friend and fellow artist, while Eisenhower’s study of his wife recalls his love of painting as a hobby.

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