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Eliza Judah Myers
Artist:
Gilbert Stuart
(American, 1755-1828)
Date: ca. 1808
Medium: Oil on poplar board
Dimensions:
Overall: 33 1/4 x 26 1/4 in. (84.5 x 66.7 cm)
Classification: American art
Credit Line: Moses Myers House, Norfolk, Virginia. The Historic Houses are the property of the City of Norfolk and are operated by The Chrysler Museum.
Object number: M51.1.270
Terms
- Women
- Portrait
- Eliza Myers
- Blue
- White
- Brown
- Red
- Gray
- Pink
- Portrait
- Boston, Massachusetts
In Collection(s)
On view
DescriptionPortrait of Eliza Myers shown in half length with her left shoulder nearest the spectator. She wears a turban scarf over her right shoulder and a high waisted dress.
Exhibition HistoryDrawing Room, Myers House, 1820 - present.
"A Tricentennial Celebration: Norfolk 1682-1982," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., Jan. 23 - July 18, 1982. Exh. cat. fig. 76.
"Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America, "The Jewish Museum, New York, Sept. 21, 1997 - Jan. 11, 1998. Exh. cat. no. 70.
"A Tricentennial Celebration: Norfolk 1682-1982," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., Jan. 23 - July 18, 1982. Exh. cat. fig. 76.
"Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America, "The Jewish Museum, New York, Sept. 21, 1997 - Jan. 11, 1998. Exh. cat. no. 70.
Published References
George C. Mason, _The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879), 223. Listed as Mr. and Mrs. Mieres.
Lawrence Park, _Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works_ Vol. II (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1926), 545, no. 572-573.
"The Myers House," _Norfolk Museum Bulletin_ Vol. 5, no. 1 (October 1951): 3.
_Handbook of the Myers House, 1792, Norfolk, Virginia_, The Norfolk Museum, 1960, n.p.
Hannah R. London, _Portraits of Jews by Gilbert Stuart and Other Early American Artists_ (New York, W.E. Rudge, 1927; reprint Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, 1969), 50-53, 163, 165.
Betsy L. Fahlman, et al., _A Tricentennial Celebration: Norfolk 1682-1982_ (Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1982), 77-78, fig. 76.
_The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia_ (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 161.
Richard Brilliant, _Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America_, exh. cat., The Jewish Museum, New York, 1997, 83-84, fig. 70.
"Myers Portraits Return Home," _The Chrysler Bulletin_ (April 1998): 3.
Norfolk Convention & Visitors Bureau, _Cannonball Trail: 400 Years of Building and Defending This Nation_ (Norfolk, VA: City of Norfolk and Norfolk Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2000), 26-27.
Mary Miley Theobald, "Virginia's Early Jews: Just Passing Through," _The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation_ Vol. XXII, No. 3 (August 2000): 39-43.
Joe Mosier, "The Reluctant Midshipman: The Journeys of Henry Myers," _The Daybook_ 8, issue 3 (12/2002): 6-9, 14-15.
Catherine Soussloff, "Portraiture and Assimilation in Vienna: The Case of Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat," _Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity_ edited by Howard Wettstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 115, 118-119. ISBN: 0-520-22864-2
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 28-29, no. 8. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6
Catherine M. Soussloff, _The Subject in Art: Portraiture and the Birth of the Modern_ (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 73, 76 & 77, plate 20 & 21 ISBN: 978-0822336709
Paul Clancy, _Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began_ (San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 2006), 34 & 78. ISBN: 9781893619654
Paul R. Clancy, _Hampton Roads Chronicles: History from the Birthplace of America_ (Charleston: The History Press, 2009), 28.
Provenance
Moses Myers commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint pendant portraits of himself and his wife, Eliza Judah Myers. These portraits were probably among the "5 Family pictures" listed in the Drawing Room when the house was inventoried in 1820. The portraits descended in the family until 1931; The Colonial House Corporation purchased the property and the contents to preserve the house as a historic landmark, 1931; The Colonial House Corporation deeded the property and contents to the City of Norfolk, 1951; The City of Norfolk transferred the ownership of the contents of the house to the Chrysler Museum of Art, 1997.
Catalogue EntryIn the first decades of the nineteenth century, Norfolk, Virginia, was the eighth largest city in the United States, with a thriving commercial and mercantile element. One of the leaders of this community was Moses Myers (1753-1835), a Jewish merchant and banker who was linked by family, social, and financial ties to the most prominent and influential members of the new nation's governing class, including Presidents Jefferson and Monroe, Philadelphia philanthropist Stephen Girard, and shipbuilder Abraham Touro, a patron of Newport, Rhode Island's landmark Touro Synagogue.
Eliza Judah (1763-1823), a young widow from Montreal, married Moses in 1787 and bore twelve children over the next two decades, nine of whom survived infancy. The couple's move to Norfolk came just after the 1786 passage of Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom, which gave Jews and all other religious groups complete freedom of religion. Melvin Urofsky, in his history of Jewish life in Virginia, wrote that the statute "turned up a fertile soil in which Jewish communities could flourish and prosper."
Moses and Eliza Myers spent the most prosperous years of their lives together-a period that ended with the Panic of 1819-furnishing, decorating, and expanding the large brick neoclassical house they built in 1792. In the drawing and dining rooms of their Bank Street mansion, they entertained merchants, sea captains, and statesmen, and Eliza became known as a hostess "of great good humor." Among the finest of their acquisitions, which included furniture in the new Greek taste from Baltimore, Norfolk, and New York craftsmen, were their pendant portraits by Gilbert Stuart.
Stuart was born near Newport, Rhode Island, but spent eighteen years in London and Dublin, where he established a formidable reputation as a portraitist (see object 66.34.4). The two portraits from life that he painted of George Washington after his return in 1793 were probably meant to impress European patrons rather than Americans. Whatever his intent, Stuart remained in the United States for the rest of his life, moving from New York to Philadelphia, then briefly to Washington, D.C., to paint members of Jefferson's administration, before settling in Boston in 1805. His clients included the first five presidents as well as a number of friends and associates of the large and well-connected Myers family.
The early Stuart scholar Lawrence Park dated the Myers portraits c. 1808, a few years after Stuart's arrival in Boston. The family archives have produced no documents to date them more precisely, and they may have been executed several years earlier or later. Characteristically, Stuart relied on familiar poses and settings. Moses is shown in a manner appropriate to a man of business-in the midst of his correspondence, a bundle of bound letters beside an open one still bearing its bright red sealing wax (see object 80.219). Eliza appears in an Empire gown and lacy shawl, with her hair tied up and partially concealed by a broad band of fabric; Stuart had depicted Dolley Madison in a similar manner (and sitting in the same chair) in 1804 (Collection of the White House, Washington, D.C.).
Stuart's paintings, along with other family portraits and most of their furniture from the same period, can still be seen in the Moses Myers House, now owned by the City of Norfolk and operated as a historic house and museum by the Chrysler Museum of Art.
-MNH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 28-29, no. 8.
Eliza Judah (1763-1823), a young widow from Montreal, married Moses in 1787 and bore twelve children over the next two decades, nine of whom survived infancy. The couple's move to Norfolk came just after the 1786 passage of Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom, which gave Jews and all other religious groups complete freedom of religion. Melvin Urofsky, in his history of Jewish life in Virginia, wrote that the statute "turned up a fertile soil in which Jewish communities could flourish and prosper."
Moses and Eliza Myers spent the most prosperous years of their lives together-a period that ended with the Panic of 1819-furnishing, decorating, and expanding the large brick neoclassical house they built in 1792. In the drawing and dining rooms of their Bank Street mansion, they entertained merchants, sea captains, and statesmen, and Eliza became known as a hostess "of great good humor." Among the finest of their acquisitions, which included furniture in the new Greek taste from Baltimore, Norfolk, and New York craftsmen, were their pendant portraits by Gilbert Stuart.
Stuart was born near Newport, Rhode Island, but spent eighteen years in London and Dublin, where he established a formidable reputation as a portraitist (see object 66.34.4). The two portraits from life that he painted of George Washington after his return in 1793 were probably meant to impress European patrons rather than Americans. Whatever his intent, Stuart remained in the United States for the rest of his life, moving from New York to Philadelphia, then briefly to Washington, D.C., to paint members of Jefferson's administration, before settling in Boston in 1805. His clients included the first five presidents as well as a number of friends and associates of the large and well-connected Myers family.
The early Stuart scholar Lawrence Park dated the Myers portraits c. 1808, a few years after Stuart's arrival in Boston. The family archives have produced no documents to date them more precisely, and they may have been executed several years earlier or later. Characteristically, Stuart relied on familiar poses and settings. Moses is shown in a manner appropriate to a man of business-in the midst of his correspondence, a bundle of bound letters beside an open one still bearing its bright red sealing wax (see object 80.219). Eliza appears in an Empire gown and lacy shawl, with her hair tied up and partially concealed by a broad band of fabric; Stuart had depicted Dolley Madison in a similar manner (and sitting in the same chair) in 1804 (Collection of the White House, Washington, D.C.).
Stuart's paintings, along with other family portraits and most of their furniture from the same period, can still be seen in the Moses Myers House, now owned by the City of Norfolk and operated as a historic house and museum by the Chrysler Museum of Art.
-MNH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 28-29, no. 8.
