Artist/Maker

Davenport, Patrick Henry __Attributed to

Place Made

Date Made

circa 1825

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

HOA: 39″ WOA; 34″

Accession Number

6158

Description

DESCRIPTION: Half-length portrait of a middle-aged woman seated in a scroll-arm couch of highly figured wood, black upholstery, and bright brass tacks. The background is dominated by a green-brown drape pulled slightly back to reveal a suggestion of sky. The sitter’s proper right arm rests on the sofa, while the other falls along her side. She wears an embroidered cap with ruffles and a voluminous striped taupe ribbon that ties under her chin. Her long-sleeved taupe dress with an empire waist has an all-over print of sprigs. The gauzy collar with embroidery and ruffle details has a squared overall shape. The opening closes to a point and is ornamented with a gold pin. The sitter’s gaze is elevated and off to her proper right. Black hair peeks from under the cap and frames her robust eyebrows over grey-blue eyes. Her face is lined and shows signs of age around her thin lips and prominent chin.

Likely an original frame with applied composition ornament, but with later metallic paint and significant material loss. Painting is lined.

ARTIST: Although unsigned, the portrait of Nancy Stevenson shares features with works by Kentucky artist Patrick Henry Davenport. Born in Danville, Kentucky in 1803, his first dated paintings are from the 1820s. He was an itinerant painter in Kentucky for the next twenty years. As his career progressed through the 1840s on onward, Davenport adopted a more realistic style informed by early photography, and carried out his itinerancy in Indiana, Illinois, and Mississippi.

Davenport tends to place his figures high in the composition. Their features are highly modeled with great attention to details like textiles. Often, their gaze looks off to the far right or left.

SITTER: Nancy Young Brevard Stevenson (1774-1841) was born in Iredell County, North Carolina to Colonel Hugh Brevard (c1748-1781) and Jane Young (c1748-1790). She married James Stevenson (1768-1850) on December 26, 1793 in Iredell County, North Carolina. James and Nancy raised the first eight of their nine known children in Lincoln County, North Carolina and in 1814 moved across the mountains to Christian County, Kentucky where they lived the remainder of their lives roughly nine miles south of Hopkinsville. The Stevensons were enslavers: in the 1830 census, there were eight enslaved individuals noted in the household.

James Stevenson was an early elder of the Presbyterian Church near Sinking Spring. Nancy is buried in Old Presbyterian Cemetery in Christian County Kentucky.

Nancy Stevenson was the grandmother of Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1835-1914), who served as the Vice President of the United States from 1893-1897.

Estill Curtis Pennington, Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802-1920, Filson Historical Society, 2010

History

Descended directly through the Stevenson family until MESDA’s acquisition in 2025.