Portrait of Samuel Jones, Jr.
Date1765-1770
Attributed to
Jeremiah Theus
(1716 - 1774)
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/16 x 25in. (76.4 x 63.5cm) and Framed: 34 7/8 x 29 15/16 x 1 3/8in.
Credit LineMuseum Purchase, The Friends of Colonial Williamsburg Collections Fund
Object number2010-25
DescriptionA half-length portrait of a standing young man turned towards the right and set within four feigned spandrels. The background is a warm brown, the spandrels darker. He has brown eyes. He wears his own brown hair slightly powdered and curled up at the sides over his ears; a gray, collarless coat opened over a red waistcoat trimmed with rich gold embroidery; and a white, ruffled shirt and white neck cloth. His proper left arm is bent, the hand tucked into his waistcoat, with a black, three-cornered, gold braid-trimmed hat resting in the crook of his arm. A dark ribbon is visible at the nape of his neck, ostensibly holding his hair in a queue.The 2 3/4-inch molded frame is painted black with gilded inner and outer edges and is replacement from the early-to-mid twentieth-century.
Label TextSwiss-born Jeremiah Theus accompanied his parents when they emigrated to South Carolina in 1735. By 1740, the young artist had established himself in Charleston, offering to paint portraits and landscapes and to embellish coaches and chaises with crests and coats of arms. Charlestonians patronized Theus heavily, and because he remained in the city, painting steadily until his death in 1774, he recorded an impressive number of the area's wealthier citizens.
This subject has long been identified as a son of Samuel Jones, Sr., and his wife, Mary Odingsell, of Charleston. At least two other Theus portraits of young men bear the same, inexact, traditional identification, however, and it is not yet clear which son is which. Colonial Williamsburg's painting most likely represents Samuel Jones, Jr.
The subject's self-confident, commanding posture and alert, direct gaze convey a sense of gentility at its most impressive and appealing. Yet it is the boy's youthful good looks, artfully captured by Theus's superb sense of coloring, that linger longest in the mind's eye.
InscribedNo original inscriptions have been found.
On the back of the lining canvas, in pencil, partly in script and partly in block-style lettering, is: "Samuel Jones jr/son of Samuel Jones and/Mary Odinsell [sic]/of Exeter Plantation/near Charleston/S. C."
MarkingsAn exhibition label on the back of one of the stretchers is partly press-printed and partly typed; it reads "The North Carolina Museum of Art/Raleigh, N. C./Artist: Jeremiah Theus/Title: "Portrait of a Man (__ Jones)"/Access. No. TL.635.39/Tercentenary Exhibition/March 23-April 28, 1963".
ProvenanceThe provenance is unclear. The picture is conjectured to have descended to the subject's sister, Mary Jones Broughton (Mrs. Alexander Broughton)(b. about 1725/1730 and d. 1815), who acquired Exeter Plantation in Berkley Co., SC, in 1764 or 1767.
Sometime later (in the early 20th century?), a "Mrs. Misservey" (or "Messervey") of Charleston, SC, may have sold the painting [James W. Lane to John I. H. Baur, 14 July 1952]; it is not clear whether she owned it or simply brokered it. [Brooklyn Museum, "Bibliography," p. 1001, gives the second spelling of the surname.]
It is believed that, by the 1930s, the painting had been acquired by André E. Rueff and Mary H. Sully (Mrs. Albert Walter Sully), Brooklyn, NY [Brooklyn Museum, "Bibliography," p. 1001].
The painting may or may not have then descended to (or been bought by) Mary Sully's daughter, Ruth Sully Curtis (Mrs. James W. Curtis). [FARL records state that it was offered by sale by Curtis].
The painting was acquired by Theo Taliaferro; to her son, Frank Horton, Winston-Salem, NC; to G. Wilson Douglas, Jr., by whom given to CWF's source, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, NC, in 1995.
Exhibition(s)
ca. 1800
Probably 1792-1793
ca.1835
1810-1815 (probably)