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Portrait of Jeremiah Todd (ca. 1745-1812)
No image number on slide

Portrait of Jeremiah Todd (ca. 1745-1812)

Dateca. 1805
Attributed to
OriginAmerica, Massachusetts, Newburyport (possibly)
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/4" x 25 3/4" and Framed: 36" x 32 1/2"
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number1958.100.41
DescriptionA bust length portrait of a man facing right, placed in spandrel led oval. The facial features are shaded in a blue tint, giving a sculptural affect. There are lines in the forehead and the eyes of the sitter are squinting, the mouth is in a tight line. The artist carefully included a mole under the left eye of the sitter. The sitter wears a black coat and white neck piece and has wispy white hair and blue eyes. The oval background is olive green and the spandrel is a darker green-brown.
Label TextJeremiah Todd's craggy face must have presented quite a challenge to Jennys. The artist's capability and close observation are evident in the asymmetry of Mr. Todd's eyes, his realistically rendered thick head of hair, and in the generally convincing modeling of a multitude of facial wrinkles. One wonders, however, if the subject's crooked nose had quite so jagged an outline as Jennys gave it. The heavy brown shadow beneath the far eyebrow is also overly simplified and too sharply delineated to fit comfortably with the other, more softly defined, modeling in the face. Jennys's shadowing of the por¬trait's painted spandrels is directly related to the high contrast modeling of engraved or painted "frames" that were often an integral part of eighteenth-century mez¬zotint and oil portraiture.

Jeremiah Todd married Mary Atkin on June 30, 1768, and eight children are said to have been born to the couple. Todd owned a house on Market Square in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he sold in 1810. His wife died August it, 1803, aged fifty-nine; Todd died at Atkinson, New Hampshire, August 12, 1812, aged sixty-seven, and both were buried in New¬buryport. Along with this portrait, a likeness titled Woman Holding a Rose, identified as Todd's daughter, Mary Todd Stanwood (1768-1800), was advertised by Snow and Mills in 1958. However, when Snow and Mills later sold the pair to The Old Print Shop, they apparently identified her as Todd's wife. The present whereabouts of the woman's portrait is unknown.

Although Jennys's travels have not yet been documented extensively enough to provide evidence for conclusive dating of Jeremiah Todd portrait, the artist's 1807 receipt for James Clarkson's likeness establishes the fact that Jen¬nys was in Newburyport in 1807. Possibly Todd's por¬trait was painted at the same time and cost the $25 known to have been paid for Clarkson's.
InscriptionslMarks: A handwritten label attached to one of the stretchers at the time of acquisition is recorded as having read "Jeremiah Todd, born in Rowley, Mass./Inscription(s)A handwritten label attached to one of the stretchers at the time of acquisition is recorded as having read "Jeremiah Todd, born in Rowley, Mass./1745 died in Atkinson, Mass. or N. H. Aug. 29th 1812. Father to Mary J./ Stanwood, mother of Mary Stanwood/Morrill, he is great-grandfather to/Annie J. Morrill Rumney." The transcription is taken from conservator Russell Quandt's notes dated April-May 1959; the label itself is now missing.ProvenanceThe portrait descended in the sitter's family [per The Old Print Shop to AARFAC, May 29, 1963]; Kenneth E. Snow and Richard L. Mills, Newburyport, Mass.; The Old Print Shop, New York, NY.