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Home » Collection » William Seton
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography
Provenance

(Rose M. de Forest [Mrs. Augustus De Forest], New York); purchased 6 December 1921 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[1] 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 1947 to NGA.

[1] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Artists 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). Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works, with an Account of his Life by John Hill Morgan and an Appreciation by Royal Cortissoz, 4 vols, New York, 1926, 372-373, published the portrait as of Cyrus Griffin, with the false provenance provided by Rose de Forest, who claimed that the portrait was handed down from Cyrus Griffin's daughter Mary to her daughter Eliza Waller and her son Matthew Page Waller. The typed copy of a letter to "Mr. de Forest," dated 16 April 1926 and purporting to be from Louisa Cosnahan, Dr. Waller's niece, stated that the portrait hung in Waller's home for many years (NGA curatorial file; the original letter was not provided). This letter, provenance, and sitter identification were proven false by William Sawitzky and by Anna Wells Rutledge and James W. Lane, "110 Paintings in the Clarke Collection," unpublished typescript, NGA Department of Curatorial Records, 1952; see William Sawitzky, "Some Unrecorded Portraits by Gilbert Stuart, Part Three: Portraits Painted in America," Art in America 21, no. 3 (June 1933), 92-93, and lecture notes for his class at New York University, c. 1940, Rutledge and Lane 1952, 1-2, and William P. Campbell's memo of 11 January 1966 to John Walker (NGA curatorial file).

Exhibition History
1922
Portraits Painted in the United States by Early American Artists, The Union League Club, New York, February 1922, no. 10, as Cyrus Griffin by Gilbert Stuart.
1928
A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Early American Portrait Painters, The Century Association, New York, 1928, as Cyrus Griffin by Gilbert Stuart.
1928
Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unpaginated and unnumbered catalogue.
1929
Exhibition of Historical Portraits 1585-1830, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, 1929, unnumbered, as Cyrus Griffin
Bibliography
1922
Sherman, Frederic Fairchild. "Early American Portraits." Art in America 10, no. 3 (April 1922): 144
1926
Park 1926, 372-373, no. 361, repro.
1930
Weddell, Alexander Wilbourne, ed. A Memorial Volume of Virginia Historical Portraiture, 1585-1830. Richmond, 1930: 258-260, repro.
1933
Sawitzky, William. "Some Unrecorded Portraits by Gilbert Stuart: Portraits Painted in America." Art in America 21, no. 3 (June, 1933): 83-84, 91, 92-93.
1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 110, repro.
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 240, repro.
1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 358, repro.
1995
Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 285, repro. 286.