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Lot Essay
Signed and dated by the artist, this portrait depicts sisters Anna Jenkins (1853-1900) and Alice (b. 1857) Hoppin, great great granddaughters of famous Providence merchant Moses Brown (1738-1836). The artist, George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894) was born in Boston and, the portraitist of European Royalty and American Presidents, was a painter of international renown. This portrait of the Hoppin sisters was painted at the end of the artist's third visit to Providence from September 1858 to January 1859, along with portraits of their mother, Anna Almy (Jenkins) (b. 1831) and father, Thomas Frederick Hoppin (1816-1873), an artist. A contemporary list of Healy's Providence portraits lists those of the parents and underneath the father's listing, is "T.F. Hoppin's [illeg] 400," possibly a reference to the portrait offered here and if so, indicates Healy charged $400 (Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., "Paintings at John Brown House," Rhode Island History, vol. 31, no. 2 (Sprint/Summer 1972), p. 44; Exhibition of Paintings by George Peter Alexander Healy 1813-1894 Upon the Centenary of his Birth (Chicago, 1913), n.p.; Ann Allen Ives, "Portraits taken in Providence by George Peter Alexander Healy" (unpublished mss., 1859), in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society and copy in Joseph K. Ott Papers).
Anna and Alice Hoppin were raised in a grand Italian-villa style house still standing at 383 Benefit Street in Providence. The house stood on the site of a 1789 wooden mansion built by John Innes Clark that in 1849 burned to the ground, taking the life of the sitters' maternal grandmother, Anna Eliza (Almy) Jenkins (1811-1849) despite the efforts of the family's pet dog to rouse the entire household. The heroism of the dog was celebrated in a bronze sculpture designed by the sitters' father and cast by the Gorham Company. This statue stood on the lawn of the Hoppins' house and afterwards was moved to Roger Williams Park where it is known as "The Sentinel." The painting was acquired from a descendant of the Brown family along with an eighteenth-century Newport chest-on-chest and most likely remained in the family until purchased by Joseph K. Ott (Joseph K. Ott, "John Innes Clark and His Family--Beautiful People in Providence," Rhode Island History 32, no. 4 (Fall 1973), pp. 123-124).
Anna and Alice Hoppin were raised in a grand Italian-villa style house still standing at 383 Benefit Street in Providence. The house stood on the site of a 1789 wooden mansion built by John Innes Clark that in 1849 burned to the ground, taking the life of the sitters' maternal grandmother, Anna Eliza (Almy) Jenkins (1811-1849) despite the efforts of the family's pet dog to rouse the entire household. The heroism of the dog was celebrated in a bronze sculpture designed by the sitters' father and cast by the Gorham Company. This statue stood on the lawn of the Hoppins' house and afterwards was moved to Roger Williams Park where it is known as "The Sentinel." The painting was acquired from a descendant of the Brown family along with an eighteenth-century Newport chest-on-chest and most likely remained in the family until purchased by Joseph K. Ott (Joseph K. Ott, "John Innes Clark and His Family--Beautiful People in Providence," Rhode Island History 32, no. 4 (Fall 1973), pp. 123-124).