Portrait of Harriet Gore Handy Tingle Stevenson (Mrs. John Slemmons Stevenson)(1804-1853)

Date1832

Attributed to John Slemmons Stevenson (1807 - 1867)

OriginAmerica, Maryland, Worcester County, Snow Hill

MediumOil on wood panel

DimensionsOther (Unframed): 13 3/4 x 10 3/4in. (34.9 x 27.3cm) Framed: 15 9/16 x 12 5/8 x 1in.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number2010.100.2,A

DescriptionA bust-length portrait of a woman turned one-quarter towards the viewer's left. She wears a black dress with a sheer white embroidered collar that stands stiffly around her neck. Her dark brown hair is pulled back from a center part and piled on top of her head with large corkscrew curls over the tempels. A large tortoiseshell comb secures her tresses at the back. She has blue eyes. The background is a warm olive-brown. The verso is heavily, flatly, over-painted, but the outlines of a bust-length profile of a man facing left are discernible beneath the covering paint.

No frame was on the portrait at the time of acquisition; flecks of gilding adhered along the lower edge suggest that it and its companion portrait (2010.100.1) were once in gilded frames.

A new, 1 1/8-inch gilded, cyma recta frame (2010.100.2,B), fabricated by Black Dog Gallery, Yorktown, Va., was placed on the portrait in September 2012.
Label TextSelfies are made at the click of a button today, but creating a self-portrait in the 19th century required both patience and artistic ability. Self-portraits by untrained artists are rare, and several features make this one by John Stevenson extraordinary. An inscription on the back confirm’s his authorship, provides the date, and notes that this was only the third painting he ever attempted.

Stevenson was born at Newtown (now Pocomoke City) on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At a young age, he went to Baltimore to learn silversmithing from Samuel Kirk, then to New York City to study watchmaking. At 20, he settled in Snow Hill, Maryland. Over the course of his lifetime, Stevenson was also a merchant, a farmer, and a postmaster. He engraved, sketched, cut silhouettes, painted political banners and portraits, and fashioned furniture as well. According to his grandson, Stevenson “could make almost anything with his tools, and if necessary make the tools too.” Their daughter described Harriet her “as a woman of excellent judgement… She was a close observer and had a remarkable ability to judge character. He (Stevenson) was quick and impulsive, she was patient and deliberate.”

ProvenanceThe earlier part of the following provenance for 2010.100.1 and 2010.100.2 is speculated based on genealogical data and a presumed line of family descent: From the portrait subject to her husband, John Slemmons Stevenson; to his daughter, Mrs. John McMaster (Elizabeth Grace Stevenson)(1831-1903) of Worcester County, Maryland; to her daughter, Mrs. Herbert Henry King (Harriet Ann McMaster)(1853-1926) of Worcester County, Maryland; to her daughter, Mrs. Charles Russell Higgins (Lulu King)(1883-1969) of Worcester County, Maryland; to her daughter, Mrs. John Daniel Helm, Jr. (Sarah Grace Higgins)(1916-1996) of Worcester County, Maryland; to her husband, John Daniel Helm, Jr. (1915-2009) of New Providence, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; to an unidentified dealer who is said to have acquired the pair from "a house in York County, Pennsylvania"; to dealer Kelly Kinzle of New Oxford, Pennsylvania, who was AARFAM's source and who kindly identified the last family owner (Helm) for AARFAM reference.

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