Portrait of Hannah French Bacon (Mrs. Asahel Bacon)(1765-1833)

Date1795

Artist William Jennys (1774-1859)

OriginAmerica, Connecticut, Litchfield County (n. 1)

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/8" x 25 5/8" and Framed: 33 1/2" x 23 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1963.100.2

DescriptionA half-length portrait of a youngish woman, shown standing, her body turned slightly towards the (viewer's) left, her lower arms and hands not shown, and her gaze towards the viewer; feigned spandrels fill the four corners of the composition. She has dark blue or hazel eyes and brown hair that is curled at the ends and cut in two tiers (ear- and shoulder-length) around her face. She wears a tall white ruffled cap with white, satin-looking streamers and large bows; and a green, long-sleeved dress displaying copper-colored highlights. A white kerchief having a double row of pleated ruffles fills the bodice of the dress and, at her natural waistline, a white, satin-looking ribbon having a pinked terminus is secured in front with an oval buckle set with stones. The background is light brown set within darker brown spandrels.

The 2 1/4-inch flat, black-painted frame is a mid-nineteenth-century replacement, its sight edge consisting of a separate, raised, black-painted, flat strip.
Label TextThe subject was the daughter of William and Ann French of Southbury, Connecticut. In 1786, she married Asahel Bacon (1764-1838), the son of Jabez Bacon (1731-1806), a highly successful, self-made merchant of Woodbury, Connecticut. Hannah and Asahel Bacon lived in the white frame house, still standing, that had been built for Asahel in Roxbury in 1784. Also see this portrait's three companion likenesses, which show the subject's spouse and two children.

The four paintings' dark brown painted spandrels and warm, lighter brown backgrounds are effective foils for the frequently brilliant coloration of the sitters' costumes. The green-and-orange irridescence of Hannah Bacon's dress fabric indicates that it was a shot silk (or "changeable silk" or "changeable taffeta"). Woven from warp and weft threads of different colors, such lustrous fabrics mesmerized onlookers with their shifts from one hue to another as viewing angles continually altered. At or about the same time that Jennys painted Hannah, he also depicted Rebecca Thompson Bacon, a close relation by marriage, in a dress of the same or similar fabric.

InscribedThe inscription "W Jennys pinxt 1795" appears in black, partly in script and partly in block letters. on the obverse of the canvas but is now covered by a lining canvas.

Regarding the inscription, in the object file, see the photo of a 10/25/1932 affidavit made by conservator Fred Hoffman and of a handwritten note appended to it by portrait owner Bennett Preston, as well as a typewritten AARFAM file note dated 3/11/1963.
ProvenanceAll four companion portraits (1963.100.1, 1963.100.2, 1963.100.3, and 1963.100.4) descended in the family of the subject of the fourth portrait, Mary Ann Bacon Wittlesey (Mrs. Chauncey Whittlesey); to Elizabeth Whittlesey Preston (Mrs. Bennett Sheldon Preston); to her son, Edward Whittlesey Preston; to his son, Bennett Preston of Bridgeport, Conn; sold by the preceding to dealer Mary Allis of Fairfield, Conn., who was CWF's source.