MEHEGAN, Mrs. Timothy (Mary McGowan; later Mrs. Patrick Mulligan)
Description:
Bust-length portrait. Oil on canvas 25½” x 19¼”, signed and dated upper right ‘A. Muller-Ury 1895’
Provenance:
By descent from the sitter’s grand-daughter Charlotte Hill Slade to her grandson.
Location:
Private Collection.
The sitter was the mother of Mrs. James J. Hill (Mary T. Hill). She was born 22 February 1827 and died 12 April 1895. Presumably painted posthumously between mid-April and mid-May 1895 for Mary Hill wrote to Muller-Ury on black-edged notepaper from the Waldorf Hotel, New York on July 31 (no date, but certainly 1895, artist’s papers) as follows:
‘Dear Mr. Muller,
We have been here a week. I was sorry not to be at home when you left. Indeed I did not know you intended to go so soon. I wished to thank you most sincerely for the very precious portrait you made of my dear mother. You can appreciate I am sure how highly I shall always value it and how much I shall always feel obliged to you. I did not know until now that you sent the flower piece to me. Whether to Mr. Hill or to me I wish to thank you for your kindness and for it…’
