VALENTINE, Mrs. Samuel (Eliza Williams Porter)
Description:
Oval, half-length, seated before a landscape, holding a rose.
Location:
Present whereabouts unknown.
Exhibition:
THE DUVEEN GALLERIES, 720, Fifth Avenue, New York, April 6 – 18, 1925, No. 8.
The sitter was the daughter of Asa Spaulding Porter (1811-1883). He descended from John Porter, who, with his wife, Rose, came to America on the good ship ‘Anne’ and arrived at Dorchester, Massachusetts, May 30th, 1627. John Porter and family remained at Dorchester, Massachusetts until the summer of 1635, then removed to Windsor, Connecticut. Asa Porter married Eliza Storrs Williams, daughter of Henry and Cynthia Wilcox Williams. From this union were two children, Mrs. Eliza Williams Valentine and Henrietta Porter. Mr. Porter died December 8th, 1883.
The sitter was the wife of Samuel H. Valentine whose house built in 1909 by Carrère and Hastings was at 5 East 67th Street, New York. The portrait was given by sitter to Mrs. Arthur Lippincott. The New York Times of 25 April 1918 says that Arthur Morton Lippinott married Henrietta Porter (1880-1948), a sister of Mrs Samuel Valentine, whose husband died in September 1916 at his home Valmar, Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, and had been one of the founders of the Automobile Club of America and the Aero Club of America.
The duotone photograph in the artist’s papers bears the stamp of Edward Heim.
