Portrait of Israel Israel (1743-1821)

Dateca. 1775

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 30" x 26" (76.2 cm. x 66.0 cm.) and Framed: 35 7/8" x 32"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Object number1956.100.1

DescriptionOil portrait of man seated in interior, three -quarter length. (His feet are left out of picture at ankles.) He is seated in a wooden sidechair with red upholstered seat with ruffle with white fringe trimming. The floor is painted with green and black diamond for a pattern to resemble tiles. The back wall is brown with darker shade directly behind sitter. Chair placed slightly on angle to picture frame with sitter facing slightly to left and off-center from center of painting. He holds a folded letter or document with red wax seal on it in the first two fingers of his right hand. His hands rest on each knee. He wears a brown coat with long coattails hanging over the side of chair, and four huge ornate silver buttons on each sleeve, with larger matching buttons two on either side down front of open coat. He wears black knee breeches and white stockings On right knee is an oval pin of diamonds. He wears a black vest with two rows of tiny buttons down the front of it. There are also similiar tiny buttons at edges of knee britches. He wears a white shirt, with white ruffle neckcloth. His light brown hair is pulled back from his forehead, but covers the ears, his eyes are large, almond shaped and brown and his eye brows, heavy and arching. His nose is large with a distinct curve and his lips thin and red. Pink handkerchief on left knee. Mid-nineteenth-century replacement 2-inch stained bolection molded frames with gilt inner and outer borders.
Label TextIsrael Israel was born in Pennsylvania, the son of Michael and Mary J. Paxton Israel. As a young man, he spent ten years in Barbados, where he acquired a considerable fortune. He returned to America before 1775, when he married Hannah Erwin (1756-1813)(see acc. no. 1956.100.2) in the Holy Trinity Church (Old Swede's Church) in Wilmington, Delaware.
The young couple settled near New Castle, Delaware, shortly after their marriage and maintained close ties with the Israel family in Philadelphia during the ensuing years. Israel Israel was a member of the Committee of Safety during the Revolutionary War. The British briefly jailed him as a spy in 1777 (note 1). After the Revolution he served as high sheriff of Philadelphia from 1800 to 1804 and as grand master of the Masonic Order of Pennsylvania in 1802 and 1804.
The identification of the portrait sitter is based on a resemblance between this image and a likeness of Israel as an old man (see note 2). Furthermore, the ornate silver buttons on Israel's coat sleeves and lapels are still owned by his descendants (note 3)..
Israel is seated on a Chippendale side chair that stands on a tile floor simulated by green and black paint. The artist clearly did not understand the rules of perspective since the front legs of the chair are too short, causing both sitter and chair to appear suspended in space.
Although the unidentified artist attempted realism in the costumes and features of both Israels' portraits, they are highly stylized. Both figures are placed so close to the foreground that their feet were left out of the compositions. The unusual ankle-length poses and the under-life-size of the subjects suggest that the painter was foreign, possibly a member of the large Scandinavian community that populated northern Delaware. The style of both portraits, though clearly less polished, is reminiscent of the academic likenesses created some years earlier in Philadelphia by Gustavus Hesselius, a Swedish immigrant whose brother once served as minister to the Swedish community in Delaware (note 4).

Note 1: Elizabeth F. Ellet, THE WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I, 6th ed., (NY, 1856), pp. 155-167.
Note 2: Hannah R. London, PORTRAITS OF JEWS BY GILBERT STUART AND OTHER EARLY AMERICAN ARTISTS (NY, 1927), pp. 26-28. See also John W. Jordan, COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY FAMILIES OF PENNSYLVANIA; GENEALOGICAL AND PERSONAL MEMOIRS, I (NY, 1911), pp. 248-249.
Note 3: London, PORTRAITS OF JEWS, p. 26, illus. on p. 111.
Note 4: E. P. Richardson, PAINTING IN AMERICA FROM 1502 TO THE PRESENT, rev. ed. (NY, 1965), pp. 30-31.

ProvenanceOwnership prior to AARFAM's source (The Old Print Shop) is unknown; acquisition funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

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