Portrait of Deborah Richmond (1772-1802)

Date1797

Attributed to Richard Brunton (ca. 1749 - 1832)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 45 3/4 x 34 3/4in. (116.2 x 88.3cm) and Framed: 51 1/4 x 39 1/2in.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1974.100.3

DescriptionA three-quarter length portrait of a young woman seated and turned one-quarter towards the viewer's right. She sits in a reddish-brown, ill-defined side chair, her hands in her lap, her proper right hand holding a folded fan. She wears a long-sleeved, high-waisted pink dress having a white sash and white ruffled collar; white ruffles fill the lower part of the neckline, while the upper part, sheer white fabric, terminates in a ruffled choker collar with a pink ribbon tied over it. A pink rose spray is stuck in the bodice of her dress. Small white ruffles appear on the ends of her sleeves. She wears gold-colored drop earrings and has two pink ribbons and a white feather in her greyish, thickly-piled and curly hair. A very dark green drape is pulled diagonally across the half-opened window to the right in the composition, exposing a view of a house in the distance with a white picket fence in front of it. The white [est. frame] house has two chimnies and a hipped roof and is situated between two large trees. The window framing adjacent to the subject appears to be grain-painted. Below the window frame, the wall of the room housing the subject is painted or papered, showing an overall repeat of a white starlike design on a dark green ground. The subject has blue eyes and a sharply pointed nose.

The 3 1/4-inch black-painted molded frame is a modern replacement.

Label TextDeborah Richmond was born in Westport, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joshua and Eliza Cushing Richmond. She never married and maintained close ties with her sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and William Gay of Suffield, Connecticut. A surviving double portrait of Elizabeth and her son, William Cushing Gay, Jr., is dated 1797 and is attributable to the same hand. Likely the two paintings were created on the same occasion.

Deborah's and Elizabeth's portraits are ascribed to Richard Brunton based on stylistic similarities between them and portraits of Reuben and Anna Humphrey owned by the Connecticut Historical Society. Very few portraits have been associated with Brunton. He was best known in his own day as an experienced engraver, silversmith, and diesinker who ran athwart the law by turning his skills to counterfeiting. In 1799, he began serving time in Newgate Prison (located at present-day East Granby, Connecticut), where Reuben Humphrey was the supervisor, or keeper. Presumably the prisoner was given the opportunity of painting the jailer and his wife as a concession for good behavior. The fact that Brunton had been working in northern Connecticut earlier, between 1792 and 1799, reinforces speculation that he painted Deborah Richmond and Elizabeth Gay in Suffield in 1797.

Deborah's thin, elongated arms and the pale pastels of her skin, hair, and dress contribute to the impression of a sensitive nature and suggest the fragility of her health. She died, aged twenty-nine, at her brother's house in Providence, Rhode Island, after a lengthy illness that affected her lungs.

For more information see Deborah M. Child, “Soldier, Engraver, Forger: Richard Brunton’s Life on the Fringe in America’s New Republic (Boston, MA: NEHGS, 2015).

InscribedWords on the lining canvas are thought to duplicate an original inscription; they read: "D. RICHMOND AGE 1797". The lining inscription was covered by a plywood tertiary support in the course of conservation treatment carried out prior to acquisition.
ProvenanceFrom the subject to her sister, Eliza Richmond Gay (Mrs. William Gay)(1768-1836); to her daughter, Deborah Frances Gay Spencer (Mrs. Thaddeus Spencer)(1807-1885) of Suffield, Conn.; to her daughter, Eliza Richmond Spencer Alling (Mrs. James Alling)(1837-1923) of New York, NY; to her son, Stephen Howard Alling of South St. Marie, Mich., and Cinncinnati, Ohio; to his wife, Margaret Nichol Threlkeld Alling (Mrs. Stephen Alling)(d. 1954); to her son, Roger Alling (d. 1986), who was CWF's source [Roger Alling to AARFAM, 15 October 1971].