SLADE, Mrs George Theron (Charlotte Elizabeth Hill)
Description:
Half length standing wearing a heavy fur coat. Signed upper right ‘Muller-Ury’
Location:
Private Collection, USA
Provenance:
By descent from the sitter.
Charlotte Elizabeth Hill Slade (1877–1923), was James J. Hill’s daughter and sixth child. She married George Theron Slade (1871-1941) of New York and St. Paul on October 9, 1901. George T. Slade was an executive at The Great Northern Railroad and Yale classmate of Louis W. Hill, who was named president of the Great Northern in 1907 and board chairman in 1912. They had two children George Norman Slade (1902-1975) and Georgiana Mary Peet (1903-1993).
The portrait was painted around 1920. Muller-Ury had known Charlotte Hill since he first came to St. Paul in 1885, and whilst James J. Hill never commissioned a portrait of her, the members of the Hill family remained friends with the artist until his death in 1947 and it is only to be expected that he would have painted some of them as adults. Charlotte’s portrait is very sensitively handled and her expression warm. The looser handling of the texture of the fur coat is typical for the period 1905-1920.
