Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Caroline Schermerhorn, Mrs William Backhouse Astor?)
Description:
Bust length oval portrait of a woman facing right, with white hair, bare shouldered, a small pendant around her neck, wrapping a fur around her, signed lower right ‘A. Muller-Ury.’
Location:
Present Whereabouts Unknown
This portrait bears some similarity to another oval portrait today in the Preservation of Newport County that may be Caroline Schermerhorn, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor Jr. (1830-1908). It is only known from this fading photograph in the artist’s papers in Switzerland. It is not impossible that he painted Mrs Astor twice in the last decade of her life and she chose which of the two portraits she wished to keep, or, as was often the case, after he had made two portraits on commission, he made a copy of one of them for his racks and that this is the one today in Newport.
