POTTER, Miss
Description:
Depicted ‘seated on a bank at the edge of a woodland, with green valley stretching beyond’ (New York Herald, April 2, 1913), and signed lower left ‘Muller-Ury’.
Location:
Present Whereabouts Unknown.
Exhibition:
M. KNOEDLER & CO., 556-558, Fifth Avenue, New York, March 31 – April 12, 1913, No. 11.
Bibliography:
American Art News, New York, November 4, 1911
New York Herald, April 2, 1913
American Art News, New York, April 5, 1913
Brooklyn Eagle, April 6, 1913
New Yorker Staats Zeitung, April 6, 1913
The sitter was either Jean or Charlotte Potter, one of the daughters of Caroline Morton, Mrs. William C. Potter (whose husband was a mining engineer in Mexico City at this time, and later a President of the Guaranty Trust; she was divorced in the early 1920s in Paris, and married Harry Frank Guggenheim, 1890-1971) and was the grand-daughter of Mrs. Paul Morton (the other younger daughter was Pauline Morton Smith Sabin Davis 1887-1955 [in 1922 Mrs. Charles A Sabin, Bayberry Lane, Shinnecock Hills]). Mrs. Morton’s husband, who was born in Detroit on May 22, 1857, and involved with the Burlington railways before entering politics and becoming Secretary of the Navy in Roosevelt’s cabinet [1904-1905], died at the Hotel Seymour in New York on January 19, 1911.
A letter from Charlotte Goodridge Morton (who married him on October 13, 1880) in the artist’s papers, dated May 5, 1911, refers to this portrait:
‘Dear Mr. Muller-Ury
I am sending you the check for the balance on the portrait. It is very lovely and an excellent likeness. I will have it insured at once for the full value. We are leaving for Briarcliff Lodge tomorrow morning. My permanent address will be 120 Broadway for all my mail, so will you please send the acknowledgement there.
Very sincerely yours, Charlotte G. Morton.’
American Art News, April 5, 1913, described this picture as ‘picturesque and good in color.’
