Girl in Green

Dateca. 1800

Attributed to John Brewster, Jr. (1766 - 1854)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 39 x 24in. (99.1 x 61cm) and Framed: 44 1/4 x 29in.

Credit LineGift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

Object number1939.100.6

DescriptionA three-quarter-length portrait of a young girl shown standing and nearly full face, her head turned only slightly towards the viewer's right. The background is an overall slate blue. The girl has brown eyes and light brown, shoulder-length hair cut in bangs over the forehead. She wears a high-waisted, short-sleeved green gown trimmed with white lace at the cuffs and neckline and with white cording. The cording runs over her shoulders and encircles the gown's high waistline and is tied at the girl's proper right side; it hangs, ending in five tassels, along her proper right side. She also wears two strands of large white beads around her neck. Her proper right arm is bent at the elbow, her forearm raised to about the height of her natural waist, and in her hand she holds an open, brown-covered book. Her proper left arm hangs loosely along her side.

The 2 7/8-inch frame is a modern replacement. It is cove-molded and black-painted with a gilt liner and an outer quarter-round molding.
Label TextSee "Provenance." The portrait's long association with acc. no. 1939.100.5, a portrait of a young boy also attributed to John Brewster, Jr., is a factor in the assumption that the two subjects were siblings. A number of compositional and coloristic similarities support the notion. but It has not been verified, and the identities of the children remain undetermined. (See "Curatorial Remarks" for one author's identification of the subject of 1939.100.6 as Nancy Prince [?-1790] of Newburyport, Massachusetts.)

Brewster was born a deaf-mute but was encouraged to cope with his affliction from an early age. He mastered reading and writing, then studied painting under the Reverend Joseph Steward (1753-1822), and he began portraying family members and Hampton, Connecticut, neighbors in the early 1790s. By 1796, he was living in Maine, probably in Buxton with his younger brother, Royal, but he also traveled extensively in order to find and accommodate a portrait cilentele, He worked not only in Connecticut and Maine but also in Massachusetts and eastern New York. Full-scale and miniature portraiture provided him a livelihood for the remainder of his life.

ProvenanceEdith Greogor Halpert's records (see below) state that a man now known only as "Johnson" claimed to have once owned 1939.100.5 and 1939.100.6, adding that he "found the two pictures in the possession of a family residing in Beacon, New York (Dutchess Co.)." Halpert noted that Johnson could not recall the name of the Beacon family but said that the family told him about an area ancestor of theirs who had been an itinerant physician. Exactly who then speculated that the physician may have been the children's father is unclear --- whether the Beacon family, Johnson, or Halpert.

Purchased [presumably from Johnson] by Mrs. Mark W. Henderson of South Norwalk, Conn. [and, later, University, Va.]; sold at Parke- Bernet Galleries, New York, NY, on April 23, 1938; Edith Gregor Halpert, Downtown Gallery, New York, NY; purchased from the preceding by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, by whom given to Colonial Williamsburg in 1939.