Portrait of Daniel Trueheart (prob. ca. 1740 - prob. 1807)

Dateca. 1794

Attributed to William Hodgson (1748-1806)

MediumOil on canvas

Credit LineGift of Mr. & Mrs. Bruce B. James, in memory of Margery Woodall James Fleet

Object number2019.100.2,A&B

DescriptionPortrait of a man in a buff waistcoat and breeches and a dark green coat with a red collar. He is seated beside a table bearing a glass decanter containing a red liquid and two glasses situated on a round wooden waiter or tray. Shelves in the background contain two food molds and a hunting or coaching horn. In his right hand he holds a folded copy of the Richmond and Manchester Virginia Gazette dated 1794.
Label TextBorn in England in 1726, Daniel Trueheart and his father, Aaron Bartholomew Trueheart, immigrated to Virginia some time prior to 1740. He married Mary Garland in 1742 and together the couple raised 7 children at their home, Meadow Bridge in Hanover County. Throughout his life Daniel found work as a tavern keeper, plantation owner, and a hat maker.

The Trueheart portraits provide a valuable document of late 18th century life; depicting the sitters in the tavern that they operated surrounded by everyday objects such pipes, copper molds, and an issue of the Virginia Gazette. The inscription of 1794 on the newspaper helps to date the portrait to the year that their son, Bartholomew, married Mary Polly Seabrook.

For many years, the artist of the Truehearts' portraits was known simply as "the Payne Limner." The artist recieved this moniker based on a series of identified paintings worked in Goochland County, Virginia of the Payne family. More recent research has uncovered the artist to be William Hodgson, a British man of many artistic talents who was working in the Richmond area by the late 1780s.

InscribedThe newspaper is inscribed, in part "The Virginia Ga..." and "RICHMOND and MANCHEST.." and "4 THURSDA_ 1794 NOMB. 10."
ProvenanceCa. 1794, Daniel Trueheart [1726-ca. 1807] and Mary Garland Trueheart [1724-1801] (Meadow Bridges, Hanover Co., VA); ca. 1807, probably to their eldest son, Lewis Trueheart [1763-1815] (Hanover Co., VA); ca. 1815, probably by descent to his sister, Martha "Patsy" Trueheart Storrs [1774-1860], and Gervas Storrs [1771-1848] (Hanover Co., VA); dates unknown, by descent to Gervas Storrs (Baltimore, MD); dates unknown, by descent from the above to Virginia Davies Storrs Callaghan Bedell (Richmond, VA); ca. 1960, by gift from the above to her cousin, Margery Woodall James Fleet [1911-2018], and Algernon Sidney Buford James, Jr. (Richmond, VA); ca. 2018, by decent from the above to Bruce Beveridge James (Providence Forge, VA); 2019-present, given to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.