Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Caroline Schermerhorn, Mrs William Backhouse Astor?)
Description:
Bust length portrait of a lady with grey hair facing the viewer in an off the shoulder blue dress, wearing a single row of pearls and a brooch on the front of her dress. Oil on canvas, 35.5″ x 30″,
Location:
The Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, RI, U.S.A.
Provenance:
The artist; Jessica Dragonette; her husband Nicholas M. Turner; his gift to the University of Wyoming, 1987; their gift to the Preservation Society of Newport County 2008.
The fashionable oval format was used by the artist quite often from 1901 to 1914. It is possible that this portrait is of Caroline Schermerhorn, Mrs William Astor Jr. (1830-1908), when the sitter was in the last decade of her life, and this identification would certainly fit, though it is difficult to be entirely certain as there is no mention in the artist’s papers that he painted her. However, a portrait of Mrs Astor is mentioned in an article by Jerry Cotter, ‘Muller-Ury, Portraitist,’ in The Sign, August 1947, p.27, who had apparently seen it in the artist’s studio before the artist’s last illness. The picture was subsequently acquired by soprano Jessica Dragonette from the artist’s brother Otto Muller after the artist’s death (it was not in the Plaza Art Galleries auctions in November and December 1947).
