ENOCH WOOD PERRY, Jr. (Boston 1831 – New York 1915)
A Portrait of Prescott and Mary Scott in a Garden
signed E. Wood Perry and dated 1881 in the lower left
oil on canvas
36 ½ x 28 ½ inches (92.7 x 72.4 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Henry Tiffany Scott, San Francisco and thus by descent to
Lavina Lowther, 1982
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, New York, December 3, 1997, lot 84 where purchased by
Private Collection, New York and by descent until the present time
Enoch Wood Perry, Jr. was a painter of genre, landscapes and portraits. In 1852 he embarked on a journey to Europe in order to study art. He first visited London and Paris but settled in Dusseldorf to train with Emanuel Leutze for the next 2 ½ years. This was followed by a year in Paris working in the studio of Thomas Couture. In 1857 he went to Venice where he was appointed the United States Consul. By 1860 Perry had returned to America and lived briefly in Philadelphia and New Orleans. He then traveled to many cities of the South and West gaining fame for his portraiture which included senators, generals, governors and the Prince of Hawaii. He visited Hawaii and Utah while residing in San Francisco during the next 3 or 4 years. In 1866 he opened a studio in New York City. In 1868 he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design and a full Academician in 1869. By either late 1877 or early 1878 Perry went back to San Francisco, where he remained until sometime in 1881, returning permanently to New York by 1882. During his time in San Francisco he was patronized by society which included Mrs. George Hearst, Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stamford, and of course Henry Tiffany Scott.[1]
Perry’s works formed part of the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii; Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; Shelburne Museum of Art, Shelburne, Vermont; Springville Museum of Art, Springville, Utah; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland among others.
Perry painted this portrait of Prescott and Mary, the children of the San Franciscan financier Henry Tiffany Scott in 1881. Exquisitely dressed in white linen and lace, they stand in front of a wall of flowers in a garden. Prescott holds a beautifully patterned Japanese parasol and Mary her doll. It is an ingenious blending of American and European traditions mixed with current trends in one canvas. Prescott and Mary are painted in a manner that looks back into the “hyper-realism” embedded in Colonial portraiture, as does their positioning which is meant to directly engage the viewer. Examples of young girls holding their dolls such as Mary abound in American folk art. Japanese parasols in the 1880’s were enormously popular and not only as a fashion accessory, but also as a decoration for the home.[2] Their popularity was part of a larger craze which swept France at this time and was called japonisme. It was particularly influential on Impressionism.[3]. The setting reflects the growing enthusiasm for gardening taking hold in France and America at this time. Explained by Professor Clare A. P. Willsdon, “‘It was arguably in France that through the advent of Impressionism, painting and horticulture first became more intimately interlinked than in any previous period. Monet famously considered his garden at Giverny his greatest work of art, and as his American followers became aware of this they too began to perceive the special relationship between painting and gardening”[4] Only an artist as experienced and well-traveled as Perry could have produced such a stunning blend of the past and present in a painting. Painted in sharp focus, by the brilliant contrasting of their white outfits against the vivid impressionistic colors of the parasol and flowers, this portrait is a statement for posterity. The painting testifies to the family’s position as well as the timeless and universal feelings of pride, love and aspiration parents have for their children.
Henry Tiffany Scott held the titles of the president of the Union Iron Works, the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, and the Mercantile National Bank, among others in San Francisco. He was married to Elsie E. Horsley. They had three children William Prescott, Henry H. and Mary. Prescott would become a member of the San Francisco Stock exchange. Mary would grow up to be Mrs. Walter Martin.[5]
Accompanying this painting is the image of Mary Scott replicated in miniature, executed in oil on shell, and set in the original chased gold and enamel easel frame. It is signed Wood Perry and dated 1881.
[1] Biographical information taken from Clara Erskine Clement Waters & Laurence Hutton, “E. Wood Perry” in Artists of the Nineteenth Century and their Works, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, New York, 1894, p. 173; George C. Groce & David H. Wallace, “Enoch Wood Perry, Jr.” in The New York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America 1564 – 1860, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979, pp. 500-501; Linda Grubb Jones, Enoch Wood Perry, Jr.: a biography and analysis of his thematic development, University of Utah, 1981, pp. 68-69, 113; Glen B. Opitz, Enoch Wood Perry, Jr. “ in Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo, 1986, p. 717.
[2] Daniel Delis Hill, Necessaries, Two Hundred Years of Fashion Accessories, Gemini Dragon, San Antonio, Texas, 2015, p. 59.
[3] Edward Hartman, “Japonisme and Nineteenth-Century French Literature” in Comparative Literature Studies, volume 18, no. 2, June 1981, p. 141.
[4] Virginia Grace Tuttle; A Desperately Aesthetic Business” in The Artist’s Garden, American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2015, p. 30.
[5] Biographical information taken from Notables of the West, volume II, International News Service, 1915, p. 17; and Coast Banker, San Francisco and Los Angeles, July 1916.