Portrait of Lucy Lyons Streeter (Mrs. Jacob F. Streeter)(1796-1860)

Date1827

Artist J. M. Crowley (active ca. 1820-1840)

MediumGraphite on wove paper

DimensionsPrimary Support: 4 3/8 x 3 3/8in. (11.1 x 8.6cm) and Framed: 5 7/16 x 4 7/16in.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1979.200.3

DescriptionA half-length profile portrait of a seated woman facing right. She has dark curls at her temple and wears a puff-backed, light-toned bonnet with bows at the top and back and a ruffle at the outer edges and a ribbon tie under her chin. She may be wearing a small, separate capelet with a high collar over her dress, or it may be part of her dress. Her dress is high-waisted. The crest of her side chair rolls back at the top and has reeded decoration in the middle of the near stile.

The 3/4-inch stained wood frame has incised decoration on the half-round outer edge and a wire hanging ring at the top; it appears to be original.
Label TextThe portraits of Lucy Streeter and her husband, Jacob F. (acc. no. 1979.200.4), probably were painted in Colrain (Franklin County), Massachusetts, if the 1827 date on hers is correct, since the 1830 federal census shows the couple living there. By the time of the 1850 census, the pair had relocated to Cazenovia, New York, where Jacob listed his occupation as a carpenter. A history of Colrain indicates that Lucy was born there, the daughter of Jesse and Abigail Ransom Lyons, and that she married Jacob F. Streeter on May 28, 1812. The published history lists no children born to the couple.

Lucy's and Jacob's portraits are signed "J, M, Crowley," as are over half of the thirty-plus recorded examples of the artist's work. Independent researchers have discovered considerable information about Crowley's life, but none of it has been published as of this cataloguing. Meanwhile, his sitters' residences provide some landmarks for his portrait-making itineraries through New England and New York state. Most of his likenesses are rendered solely in graphite. Many subjects sit in side chairs virtually identical to the Streeters', suggesting that the chair was an artist's prop or, perhaps, sketched repeatedly from memory.

Hands must have been a challenge for Crowley, for he rendered Jacob's as a blunt, clubbed fist and omitted Lucy's altogether.
InscribedSigned in pencil on the reverse of the unfolded primary support is "J, M, Crowley/ Delineator" and in another, unidentified, hand in pencil on the wooden backboard is "Likeness of/Lucy L. Streeter/wife of Jacob F. St[reeter?]/Taken 1827/Fashionably Dressed."
ProvenanceOwnership prior to Walters (CW's source) is undocumented.