FRELINGHUYSEN, Mrs Joseph S. (Emily Brewster) with Joseph Frelinghuysen Jr.
Description:
Full-length standing with her son – whose stands inside a hoop – beneath a clump of trees a landscape beyond and to the left. Oil on canvas, 78” x 46” (189.1cm x 116.9cm). Signed and dated lower left in brown paint ‘A. Muller-Ury 1916’. Stretcher bears printed label ‘John Schullin/Artistic Pictures,/192 Columbus Ave, N.Y.’
Location:
Newark Museum, 49, Washington Street, Box. 540, Newark, New Jersey 07101.
Provenance:
Remained in family to donor, at Far Hills and Somerville, New Jersey. Gift of Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, 1971. (71.160)
Bibliography:
New York Times, December 9, 1917
Alice Winchester, Living with Antiques: a treasury of private homes in America, 1963, p.143.
Collection Catalogue 1981.
The sitter (1881-1967) was the wife of the New Jersey Senator (1905 -11) and United States Senator (1917 – 23). Her son was born in 1912.
Painted in 1916, probably at a house in Raritan, New Jersey (now demolished) but also possibly at Hub Hollows Farm, Far Hills, New Jersey. The picture was probably finished in Washington D.C. The Frelinghuysen family was probably related to the Havemeyer family, who also lived in New Jersey but at Mahwah. The Frelinghuysens also owned an estate called Brookwoods. Senator Joseph Frelinghuysen had a business in New York at 20, Vesey Street.
On Saturday December 8, 1916, writing from 1013 Sixteenth Street, a residence near the White House in Washington D.C., Mrs. Frelinghuysen wrote as follows:
‘My dear Mr. Muller-Ury,
The picture has just come and was unpacked and hung today!
The express is so very slow just now!
It looks beautiful and I am anxious that you should see it, for it seems to me that it is not as well hung as it might be, and it surely should have a picture light —
After Christmas we shall hope to see you down here — Are there any more chances of getting another sitting from the President! I heard him read his message to Congress on Thursday, but have been away ever since.
With greetings and many thanks and appreciation of all your deep interest in making the picture a success, which it surely is!
Most sincerely yours, Emily B. Frelinghuysen.
Alice Winchester in her 1963 book, wrote that at the Frelinghuysen home ‘The broad stairway with its spiral balusters leads to a large upper hall dominated by a portrait of Mrs Frelinghuysen and her son painted by Muller-Ury in 1916.’
The duotone photograph in the artist’s papers bears the stamp of Mary Hopson.
