Edmund Burwell Redd
ARTIST: Silon Amos Henkel (1813-1844) was the youngest son of Dr. Solomon Henkel and his wife, Rebecca Miller, of New Market, Shenandoah County, Virginia. As a young man, Silon worked in his father’s Henkel Press, and later traveled with members of his family on Lutheran circuit riding trips across the South, which may explain the broad distribution of his charcoal portraits. A nearly identical profile by Silon of his cousin, Ireneus N. Henkel, now in the collection of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, is signed on the reverse, “Silon A. Henkel fecit.” Silon completed medical training at the University of Pennsylvania shortly before an untimely death in 1844. The MESDA collection includes a printed Henkel Press fraktur recording in great detail Silon’s ancestry, life, and funeral (acc. 5853).
DESCRIPTION: Small profile charcoal drawing of Edmund Burwell Redd that is mounted in a paper frame with framing black line. The paper is mounted to mat-board and placed inside a frame which is not original. The image is of a young man with dark, wavy hair on top. He is wearing a white shirt, a cravat with a flower-shaped pin, and a dark coat. His gaze is stern while seated in a chair with a central vertical slat having a design.
