Provenance

Gift of the sitter to his daughter, Louisa Matilda Stow, in 1838;[1] her sister, Caroline Adelaide Stow Hyatt [Mrs. George Hyatt, 1807-1893], Ithaca, New York; her nephew, John Phillips [d. 1905], Brooklyn, New York; bequeathed to his three sisters, Edith, Norah and Ann Broadhurst Phillips, Boston; gift of Ann Broadhurst Phillips and her cousin, Ann Brattle Bascom, Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1913;[2] sold (American Art Association, New York, N.Y., 17 January 1922, no. 27) to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[3] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA.
[1] Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated [Descriptive] List of his Works, New York 1926: 715, citing a memorandum from Stow dated 22 February 1838, which is unlocated; Stow also gave his daughter Louisa a miniature of himself by "Peale." At the same time he gave Stuart's portrait of his wife to his daughter Caroline, along with the portrait of her uncle John Peck by John Johnson [NGA 1947.17.65] and a miniature of himself by Benjamin Trott.
[2] Mantle Fielding, "Addenda and Corrections to Paintings by Gilbert Stuart. Not Noted in Mason's Life of Stuart," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 44 (January 1920), 90. John, Ann, Edith, and Norah Phillips were the children of George Phillips and his wife Ann Maria, sister of Caroline and Louisa Stow; see Albert M. Phillips, Phillips Genealogies, Auburn, Massachusetts, 1885, 184. According to Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated [Descriptive] List of his Works, New York, 1926, 715, Ann Phillips and her cousin Ann Brattle Bascom of Cambridge, Massachusetts, each acquired half-interest in the portraits at the death of Ann's sisters Edith and Norah Phillips.
[3] Notable Paintings of Artistic Distinction Belonging to the Charles F. Fowles Estate, Another Estate and Private Interests, American Art Association, New York, 17 January 1922, unpaginated, lot 27, repro.; Stuart's portrait of Mrs. Stow was sold as no. 26. The MFA and Ann Phillips' descendants were forced to sell the painting because Ann Phillips only had title to a half share. The heirs of her sister Nora Phillips owned the other half shares (memo from Harriett Pemstein, MFA, 18 April 1991; NGA curatorial file). The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1828

1922

1928

1943

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1953

Bibliography

1920

1926

1928

1932

1964

1970

1980

1992

1995

Wikidata ID

Q20181555