Portrait of Eli Merwin Todd (1792-1845)

Date1796-1798

Attributed to Jonathan Budington (1779 - 1823)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 32 7/8 x 26 1/4 in. and Framed: 36 x 29 x 1 7/8 in.

Credit LinePartial gift of Mrs. Edwin Christian Broderson in memory of her grandmother, Sophie Todd Hubbard Everest; acquisition partially funded by the Friends of Colonial Williamsburg Collections; conservation funded in part by Arthur and Sybil Kern and by the American Folk Art Society

Object number2001.100.1

DescriptionA three-quarter length portrait of a young by whose body is turned to the right. He wears a green "skeleton suit" with a white pleated collar and gold buttons and holds a book in his hands. His blonde hair is cut chin length, with bangs in front. He sits in a green-painted, bow-back Windsor arm chair. Behind him, a swagged, fringed green drape hangs in tiers along the left side of the portrait, with added ynfringed green drapery pulled to the side behind the sitter to reveal a landscape.
The 1 3/4-inch frame is original, joined by through tenons, cove molded, and black-painted; it has a flat outer edge and a gold-painted molded inner edge.
Label TextThis likeness and its companion, of the boy's mother, are the first paintings by Jonathan Budington to enter the collections at Colonial Williamsburg. Naively conceived but visually playful and compelling, their stylized forms and skewed compositions appeal to many sensibilities honed by an appreciation of modern art.
As documents of social history, they also inform our understanding of late eighteenth-century cultural and economic practices, revealing the fluctuating, often acutely competitive relationships that formed between rank beginners and more skilled practitioners of the art of portraiture. Budington is well documented as having mimicked the style of Ralph Earl (1751-1801), who was far better known and more heavily patronized in New England. Occasionally Budington even copied Earl's portraits outright.
But in painting Eli and Mercy Todd of New Milford, Connecticut, Budington may have scooped his rival entirely. When a local welcomed Earl to the town in 1796, he derisively remarked that "assuming pretenders" had preceded him. While it is unclear whether Budington was the butt of that jab, he was in the right place at the right time, and he certainly "pretended" to Earl's style as earnestly as any folk portraitist in the early Republic.
The subject of this portrait was the third child of Eli Todd (1763-1846) and his wife, Mercy Merwin Todd (1767-1806), the former of New Milford and the latter of Merwinsville, Connecticut. Eli and Mercy married about 1788 and had three children: Walker (about 1788-1840), Sophia (1790-1882), and Eli Merwin (1792-1845).
The younger Eli Todd was a merchant in Waterford, New York. In 1815, he married Mary Ann Scott (1796-1878), and the couple had the following children: Elizabeth (b. 1816), Eli Sherman (1818-1818), Sophia (1819-1824), William Ira (1822-1823), Joshua Mandeville (b. 1824), Sophie Rachel (b. 1828), and George Merwin (b. 1836).
ProvenanceFrom the portrait subject to his sister, Mrs. Sherman Hartwell (nee Sophie/Sophia Todd)(1790?-1882) of New Milford, Conn.; to her daughter, Mrs. Robert Hubbard (nee Cornelia Boardman Hartwell)(1834-1871); to her daughter, Mrs. Charles Marvin Everest (nee Sophie Todd Hubbard)(1864-1943) of Bridgeport, Conn.; in 1943, to her granddaughter, Mrs. Edwin Christian Broderson (nee Janet Hartwell Ward), who was AARFAM's partial donor.