Portrait of woman
SITTER: Research by 2022 Summer Institute fellow, Damiët Schneeweisz, documents a small note accompanying an extremely similar profile portrait of an older woman (sold at auction in 2019) suggests it was made by David Boudon “from general Custers (daughter?) Kentucky State 12 February 1917”. Preliminary study at the Kentucky Historical Society revealed that Custers were living near Frankfort, Kentucky, around the time the profile was painted. If the portraits indeed descended in the Custer family, it is possible that they depict Elizabeth Custer or one of her six daughters or daughters-in-law (many of her children were recently married by 1817), who lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, during the time these profiles were painted. Elizabeth’s husband, Conrad Custer, served in an expedition against the Shawnee, and one of their sons served in the war of 1812. At least one of their daughters, Deborah, is registered as owning two enslaved people when she arrives in Indiana from Kentucky in 1832. The profile in MESDA’s collection could depict Elizabeth or one of her daughters or daughters in law, though more research is necessary to confidently identify a potential sitter.
ARTIST: David Boudon was born in Geneva in 1748, where he apprenticed with the German engraver Jean-Daniel Dupré and took classes at Geneva’s school for the arts. After brief periods in France and Italy, the artist emigrated to the United States. He arrived in Charleston in 1794 or 1795. By 1795, Boudon was painting small likenesses with watercolor on ivory and vellum in Georgia. Journeying along the Atlantic coast and eventually into the Ohio River Valley, advertisements by the artist track his movements as an itinerant craftsman through North and South Carolina, Baltimore, Washington, Virginia, and Philadelphia, to Chillicothe, Ohio, and finally, Kentucky.
Research 2022 Summer Institute Fellow, Damiët Schneeweisz, notes that an advertisement by David Boudon has not yet been found in Kentucky, but a series of dead letters advertised in the Kentucky Gazette in 1817 place the artist in the region around the time this profile was painted. Although it is the only known profile definitively painted in Kentucky by the artist, the New York Historical Association owns another Boudon profile with an inscription that suggests it was made in Louisville, Kentucky: “Mrs. Enfield Johnson, sister of Mrs. Col. Wm. F. Phillips of Travelers’ Rest, who was also my grandmother. Taken by an artist at Louisville, Kentucky, where she resided and sent to grandmother by herself.”
Until recently, Boudon’s vast lexicon of portrait miniatures and profile likenesses suggested that Chillicothe, Ohio, was the artist’s final locale in 1816. This profile portrait, painted by David Boudon on February 15, 1817, extends our knowledge of the artist’s practice by a year and places him in the early Commonwealth of Kentucky.
RELATED OBJECTS:
MESDA’s collection holds a total of five works by Boudon: Ann (Bolton) Moore of Savannah, Georgia (acc. 4145); John and Delilah Hunter of Morgan County, Virginia (acc. 4202.1-2); unknown woman of a Custer family, Frankfort, Kentucky (6048).
FURTHER READING:
Richards, Nancy E. “A Most Perfect Resemblance at Moderate Prices: the Miniatures of David Boudon.” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (1974): 77-101. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1180569.
Boudon is known primarily as a miniaturist, working mostly in silverpoint on vellum, although some of his works are watercolor on ivory. His style, with its thin color wash over a linear image, reflects his early training as an engraver. According to his own advertisements, he considered himself more as a drafstman or “limner” rather than a painter. (See Nancy E. Richards, “A Most Perfect Resemblance at Moderate Prices: The Miniatures of David Boudon.” (Winterthur Portfolio 9, pp 77-102)
