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2025.100.1,A&B, Portrait
Portrait of Sarah Blair Watkinson
2025.100.1,A&B, Portrait

Portrait of Sarah Blair Watkinson

Dateca. 1800
Artist
OriginAmerica, Connecticut, Middletown
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 33 × 28 × 2 1/2 in (83.82 × 71.12 × 6.35cm)
Credit LineGift of the Families of Avis and Rockwell Gardiner
Object number2025.100.1,A&B
DescriptionPortrait of a woman in a orange dress with a white sash directly below the breast. She has a white kerchief with lace trim wrapped around her neck and tucked into the front of her dress. Her hair is pulled up into a large lace cap adorned with a big silver cockade. She is wearing a drop earring that looks to be made of coral and pearl beads.Label TextSarah Blair Watkinson was born in Scotland in 1742. She married Samuel Watkinson of Suffolk, England in 1768 and together the couple had 12 children. In 1795, the Watkinsons family immigrated to Connecticut and settle in Middletown. In 1798, their son John was enrolled in the Litchfield Law School. This is possibly where John met his wife Hannah Hubbard, who was enrolled in Sarah Pierce's Female Academy around the same time. John went on to become a prominent merchant and founder of a woolen manufactory on the Pameacha River in Middletown. The brick, Federal style house that John and Hannah built around 1810, and where Sarah likely spent the last few years of her life, still stands today.

The artist, William Jennys, was an itinerant portrait painter who worked throughout New England between about 1790 and 1810. He likely trained with his father, Richard Jennys, who was also a self-taught itinerant portrait painter and it is believed that the two often traveled together.ProvenanceBy 1819, from the sitter to her son, John R. Watkinson (1772-1836); by 1850, by descent to his son, John Hubbard Watkinson (1815-1891); by 1891, by descent to his daughter, Jane Huntingdon Watkinson (1852-1937); by 1937, by descent to her son, John Norton (1875-before 1976) and daughter-in-law, Mignon Waldo Norton (1892-1976); by 1977, purchased by M. Schorch Inc. (New York, New York); May 1977, purchased by Rockwell and Avis Gardiner (Stamford, Connecticut); by 2025, by descent to their grandson who was Colonial Williamsburg’s donor.