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2025-99,A&B, Portrait
Portrait of Humphrey Marshall
2025-99,A&B, Portrait

Portrait of Humphrey Marshall

Dateca. 1817
Attributed to 1788 - 1827
OriginAmerican, Kentucky, Frankfort
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 20 × 27 in (50.8 × 68.58cm)
Credit LineGift of Preservation Virginia
Object number2025-99,A&B
DescriptionPortrait depicts a young boy with short dark hair wearing a dark green suit with white collar edged in lace. His right hand is tucked into his jacket front, and he holds a hat.Label TextBorn in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1812, Humphrey Marshall was about five years old when he sat for celebrated Kentucky artist, Matthew Harris Jouett. Marshal later graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and built a career of military and political service.

Jouett reportedly painted three portraits of John and Anna Birney Marshall's childre, including Humphrey. A Kentucky native, Jouett trained with Gilbert Stuart in Boston during the summer of 1816 before returning to Lexington to establish a studio in the Kentucky Hotel.ProvenancePortrait likely descended through the family via the sitter's daughter, Frances Ethel Marshall Cecil (1842-1903); to her son, Humphrey Marshall Strader (1864-1907); to his son, Henry Cecil Strader (1892-?); to his 3rd cousin, Dorothea Marshall Villard (1907-1994) who donated the portrait and three other Birney/Marshall family portraits to Preservation Virginia in 1994. In 2025, Preservation Virginia gifted them to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.