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Counsellor John Dunn
Gilbert Stuartc. 1798
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
Details
- Title: Counsellor John Dunn
- Creator: Gilbert Stuart
- Date Created: c. 1798
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 74 x 61.5 cm (29 1/8 x 24 3/16 in.)
- Provenance: Unidentified descendants of the sitter, Norfolk, England; sold 1909 to (James Connell and Sons, London); (Louis Ralston, New York), 1909.[1] James W. Ellsworth [1849-1925], New York; sold March 1923 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York);[2] sold 26 March 1923 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] The early provenance of the portrait is documented only by a letter from Tom Connell of James Connell and Sons, London, dated 25 September 1909, to Louis Ralston (NGA curatorial file). Clarke may have been given this letter in 1923. He apparently had asked Louis Ralston about the provenance of the portrait, for Ralston wrote on 1 June 1923 that he would "take up the matter" with Mr. Connell in London "and advise you of the result." [2] Melissa De Medeiros, librarian, M. Knoedler & Co., confirmed the purchase by Knoedler in a letter dated 7 March 1992 (NGA curatorial file). Ellsworth, a financier and art collector, also sold his collection of books and manuscripts in 1923 for $450,000; _The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography_, 63 vols, Clifton, New Jersey, 1893-1894, 26:176 and _Who's Who in America_, vol. 8, Chicago, 1914, 727. [3] 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).
- Rights: CC0
- Medium: oil on canvas
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