Martha Sara (Davant) Williams
In 1847 the artist William Harrison Scarborough stayed with the Williams family in Columbia, South Carolina, for six months. During that time he completed five large oil portraits for the family, including this one and a companion portrait of her husband (MESDA acc. 5369.1)
ARTIST: William Harrison Scarborough (1812-1871). Portrait and miniature painter, born November 7, 1812, at Dover (Tennessee). After studying art and medicine in Cincinnati and working as a portraitist for a few years in Tennessee, Scarborough moved to South Carolina in 1830. In 1836 he married into a prominent family there and he lived in Darlington District for several years before settling in 1843 at Columbia, where he made his home for the rest of his life. He enjoyed considerable success as a painter of portraits and miniatures in North and South Carolina and Georgia, and also made frequent visits to New York City, though he never had a studio in the North. In 1857 he went abroad for a year of European study. Scarborough died in Columbia on August 16, 1871. His sketchbooks, diaries, and many examples of his portrait work are owned by descendants in South Carolina.
FRAME: Original carved and gilt frame.
RELATED OBJECTS: The MESDA Collection also contains portraits of both Matthew Jouett Williams and his wife Martha Sara (Davant) Williams by William Harrison Scarborough (MESDA acc. 5369.1-2) as well as a portrait miniature of Martha Sarah (Davant) Williams’s great-great Grandfather John Davant (MESDA acc. 5369.3).
REFERENCES: Helen Kohn Hennig, “William Harrison Scarborough” (Columbia, South Carolina: 1937)
DESCRIPTION: Oil on canvas, portrait of Mrs. Matthew Jouett Williams (Martha Sara Davant Williams). She is posed facing 3/4 front, and has brown hair and blue eyes. Mrs. Williams is wearing a black dress with a white lace collar and circular pendant while seated on a red upholstered chair. The painting background is brown and to the right is a column and a view of a landscape. The frame is gold and done in a snakeskin pattern, with a scrolled foliage motif at each corner.
For more information on the provenance of this painting see: Marolyn Caldwell, “Through Time and Space: The Saga of a Southern Family’s Prized Portraits” in Old Salem Museums and Gardens Magazine (Fall/Winter 2008) 10-13.
George C. Groce and David H. Wallace. THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S DICTIONARY OF ARTISTS IN AMERICA: 1564-1860. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.
