ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE P. A. HEALY (1813-1894), AFTER GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)
ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE P. A. HEALY (1813-1894), AFTER GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)
ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE P. A. HEALY (1813-1894), AFTER GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)
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PROPERTY FROM A CONNECTICUT FAMILY
ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE P. A. HEALY (1813-1894), AFTER GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Details
ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE P. A. HEALY (1813-1894), AFTER GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)
THOMAS JEFFERSON
oil on canvas
30 1⁄8 x 25 1⁄8 in.
Provenance
Possibly Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876), Blair House, Washington D.C.
Possibly Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), Blair House or Elizabeth (Blair) Lee (1818-1906), Blair-Lee House, Washington D.C., son and daughter
E. Brook Lee (1892-1984), Silver Spring, Maryland, grandson of Elizabeth
Harold D. Harvey (1893-1951), New York, acquired from above
Thence by descent

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Lot Essay

An accomplished and early copy of Gilbert Stuart’s 1805 portrait of President Thomas Jefferson, this likeness may be the work of George P. A. Healy (1813-1894) and commissioned in the midst of the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860.

The portrait faithfully replicates Stuart’s original in pose, facial expression, details of shirt ruffle and hair ribbon, and inclusion of a red-upholstered chair. Stuart’s work was painted for President James Madison and over the ensuing decades, copied by several artists including Matthew Harris Jouett, Asher B. Durand, Ezra Ames, and Thomas Badger. However, it is the portrayals by George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894) that like the example offered here most closely follow the composition of the original. Details in this work, such as the double loop of the hair ribbon and the exacting contours of the shirt ruffle, suggest the hand of Healy. Healy’s portraits are at the National Gallery of Art (acc. no. 2016.23.10) and Washington and Lee University (acc. no. U1875.1.4); for another closely related copy, formerly in the Taradash Collection, see Christie’s, 18 January 2019, lot 1320. Stuart’s 1805 portrait of Jefferson is in the collections of Colonial Williamsburg (acc. no. 1945-22). For a discussion of Stuart’s portraits of Jefferson, see Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart (New York, 2004), pp. 277-285.

Born in Boston, Healy was a successful and prolific artist who spent much of his life in Europe. He achieved international renown after he was commissioned by France’s King Louis-Phillipe to paint President Andrew Jackson and other US presidents and statesmen, a commission that was not completed due to the King’s subsequent abdication. In 1855, Healy moved to Chicago where he befriended Thomas B. Bryan (1828-1906), a prominent lawyer and philanthropist. In 1860, Bryan purchased Healy’s presidential portraits that he had already completed, in addition to commissioning a portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Lund, “Elmhurst History Highlight: Portrait Artist G.P.A. Healy,” October 2021, available at elmhursthistory.org). Among these purchases was undoubtedly one of Healy’s portraits of Jefferson, which Bryan sold to the Corcoran Gallery in 1879 and was subsequently transferred to the National Gallery of Art (see above).

The attribution to Healy is supported by the history of this portrait. According to tradition, the portrait came from the Blair House in Washington D.C. Located across from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue and now an official government building, Blair House was acquired in 1836 by Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876), a newspaper editor and politician who had moved in 1830 from Kentucky to Washington D.C. at the behest of President Jackson. During the 1850s, he was one of the organizers of the Republican party and served as a delegate to the May 1860 convention in Chicago that nominated Lincoln. Bryan was also instrumental in Lincoln’s nomination and it is very possible that Blair was introduced by Bryan to Healy at this time and like Bryan, purchased a portrait of Jefferson. Described as “a Jeffersonian democrat and a Jacksonian republican,” Blair would have been a likely owner of a portrait of America’s third president (William Ernest Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (New York, 1933, p. 65).

The portrait may have passed to Blair’s son, Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), who also lived at Blair House and was a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, or his daughter, Elizabeth (1818-1906). She lived in the adjacent Blair-Lee House with her husband, Samuel Phillips Lee (1812-1897), a cousin of Robert E. Lee. By the 1920s or 1930s, the portrait was owned by Elizabeth’s grandson, E. Brooke Lee (1892-1984), a politician and developer in Silver Spring, Maryland. Lee had attended Princeton University where he was a roommate of Harold D. Harvey (1893-1951), the current owner’s grandfather. After graduation, the two partnered in real estate in Silver Spring and according to family reminiscences, the portrait was given by Lee to Harvey as part of one of these transactions (see “Silver Spring, Once Quietly Rural, Is Real Estate ‘El Dorado’,” Evening Star [Washington D.C.], November 6, 1950, p. 27).

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