Jacob (?) Leman, c. 1808

Not on View

Medium

oil on wood

Dimensions

overall: 22.9 x 17.5 cm (9 x 6 7/8 in.)

framed: 33.7 x 28.6 x 4.3 cm (13 1/4 x 11 1/4 x 1 11/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Accession Number

1953.5.12

Artists / Makers

Jacob Eichholtz (artist) American, 1776 - 1842

Image Use

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Inscription

on reverse: Adelia Leman / 1808; upper right reverse: (5)

Provenance

Leman family, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; by descent to Adelia Leman [1857-1947], Lancaster, grandniece of the artist.[1] Acquired, likely purchased from Adelia Leman's estate, in 1948 by Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, New York, and Cambridge, Maryland; gift 1953 to NGA.

[1] Helen W. Henderson's opening comments in the brochure accompanying the 1943 exhibition Jacob Eichholtz, 1776-1842, American Artist at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, report: "A peculiarly touching incident was a visit to the outskirts of Lancaster to see the collection of a grandniece of the painter's. She sat in her bower surrounded by these souvenirs of a rich past. A particularly charming phase of the artist's work is a series of small oval portraits on wood. Many of them are family portraits and we were fortunate in procuring four from her collection."

Associated Names

Garbisch, Edgar William, Mr. and Mrs.
Leman family
Leman, Adelia

Exhibition History

1943: Jacob Eichholtz, 1776-1842, American Artist, Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1943, no. 24, as George Leman.

2003: The Worlds of Jacob Eichholtz, Portrait Painter of the Early Republic, shown at one of three simultaneous venues: Lancaster County Historical Society, Pennsylvania, 2003, unnumbered catalogue, repro. and fig. 3.4.

Technical Summary

The support is a vertically grained yellow poplar panel (0.5 cm thick) with smoothly cut edges, over which a thin, beige-brown fluid ground was applied. The paint is in thin, opaque layers extending to the bottom and right edges; at the top and left the paint stops before the edge, exposing the ground in a border approximately 5 cm wide. The technique was primarily wet-into-wet, smoothly blended, with low impasto in the background and slight impasto in the highlights of the buttons and the collar. The figure was painted within an oval. The slight abrasion overall has been inpainted in a few small rubbed areas and scattered losses. The painting was most recently treated in 1948, when discolored varnish was removed from the front and a wax coating was applied to the reverse of the panel. The varnish has become slightly discolored.

Bibliography

1960: Milley, John Calvin. "Jacob Eichholtz, 1776-1842." Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1960: 30, as George Leman.

1969: Beal, Rebecca J. Jacob Eichholtz, 1776-1842. Philadelphia, 1969: 135, no. 458, repro. 283.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 56, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 154, repro.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 171, repro.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 199-201, repro.