Mary (Dutcher) Seabrook

Artist/Maker
Hodgson, William
Place Made
Richmond Virginia United States of America
Date Made
1783
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: HOA: 38 1/8″; WOA: 31 1/8″
Framed: HOA: 41 1/2 “; WOA: 34 3/4”
Accession Number
5975.2
Description
SITTER: Mary Dutcher (or Dutchess) Seabrook (1742-1808) was born in Philips Manor, New York on October 30, 1742 to David Duytcher and his wife, Sarah Storm. She was a descendant of the early New York Dutch settler, William de Duytscher. In 1761, Mary wed Nicholas Brown Seabrook at the Dutch Reformed Church in New York City. Two years later, they moved to Portsmouth, Virginia, where her husband conducted extensive trade as a commercial sea captain. In 1771, they moved to the port city of Norfolk. Four years later, they moved to Richmond where the Seabrooks invested in downtown real estate and a nearby plantation, Dungaroon, in Hanover County. Nicholas and Mary Seabrook had six children, all of them born in Virginia, and three lived to adulthood. Mary survived her husband by eighteen years and died in Richmond in 1808.

ARTIST: William Hodgson (1748-1806) was a London-born artist who emigrated to Virginia during the Revolutionary War. Previously called “The Payne Limner”—based on ten surviving portraits of the Payne family—he worked in Richmond and the surrounding counties of Henrico, Hanover, and Goochland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Approximately 18 of his works are now known. None of these works bears a signature or date, and the attributions are based on the strong stylistic similarities among the various portraits. The discovery of a portrait of Elizabeth Christian Humber (d.1835) (MESDA acc. 5984.1), Hodgson’s daughter’s mother-in-law cemented the attribution.

See: Robert A. Leath and Carolyn J. Weekley, “William Hodgson of London and Richmond: The Payne Limner Revealed”, The Magazine ANTIQUES (December 2020)

DESCRIPTION: An oil on canvas, three-quarter length portrait of a lady wearing a finely embroidered and striped silk gown with ruffled sleeves, a lace cap, a black string necklace with a locket, and a lavender-colored artificial silk flower at her bodice. She holds a fan and a kerchief in her hands, with a gold wedding band on her left hand.

History
The five Seabrook portraits remained in the family for six generations, first in Virginia and then with descendants in New Jersey. They descended from Captain Nicholas Brown Seabrook (1739-1790) to his son John Seabrook (1768-1844), to his son Nicholas Brown Seabrook (1799-1866), to his daughter Mary Gordon (Seabrook) Studdiford (1845-after 1930), to her son Douglas Seabrook Studdiford (1880-1971). They were consigned by the last family owner as a group to Nye and Company Auctioneers in New Jersey in January 2017.
Credit Line
Gift of Patricia S. and William T. Wilson, III