Portrait of Mercy Merwin Todd (Mrs. Eli Todd)(1767-1806)

Date1796-1798

Attributed to Jonathan Budington (1779 - 1823)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 40 5/8 x 32 3/4 in. and Framed: 43 1/2 x 35 3/4 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 number2001.100.2

DescriptionA three-quarter length portrait of a woman whose body is turned slightly left. She wears a white pleated, frilled cap bound with ribbon, a necklace, a long-sleeved (red?) dress with a black sash at the natural waist, and a sheer white kerchief or fichu. She holds a nearly-closed fan in her proper left hand. Behind her, tiers of a fringed, swagged, red drapery descend on the right, with an unfringed drape pulled back over- head to reveal an exterior landscape view through a window. She sits in a side chair, whose stiles and crest rail are partially visible.
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 woman's son, 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.
About 1788, Eli Todd (1763-1846) married Mercy Merwin (1767-1806), the former of New Milford, and the latter of Merwinsville, Connecticut. The couple had three children: Walker (about 1788-1840), Sophia (1790-1882), and Eli Merwin (1792-1845). Eli, Sr., married, second, in 1808, Rachel Thompson.
ProvenanceFrom the portrait subject to her daughter, 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.; to her daughter, Mrs. George Merrit Ward (nee Ruth Hartwell Everest)(1889-1977) of Rochester, NY; in 1977, to her daughter, Mrs. Edwin Christian Broderson (nee Janet Hartwell Ward), who was AARFAM's partial donor.