Mary Seabrook

Artist/Maker
Hodgson, William
Place Made
Richmond Virginia United States of America
Date Made
1783
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: HOA: 38 1/2″; WOA: 31 3/4″
Framed: HOA: 42″; WOA: 35 1/4″
Accession Number
5975.5
Description
SITTER: Mary Seabrook (1777-1796) was born in Richmond on February 27, 1777 to Nicholas Brown and Mary (Dutcher) Seabrook. At the age of seventeen, on November 3, 1794, she married Bartholomew Trueheart, a son of well-to-do Hanover County planters Daniel and Mary (Garland) Trueheart, in a double wedding ceremony with her sister Sarah. According to family records, she died in childbirth less than two years later on May 11, 1796 at the Richmond home of her sister and brother-in-law.

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, full-length portrait of a young girl of approximately three years of age wearing a white gown with a lace collar, a red sash tied around her waist, and a single-strand pearl necklace She is holding a bouquet of flowers in her left hand while her right hand pets a small bird.

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
MESDA Purchase Fund