Micah Williams Portrait Artist - Icompendium

This portrait of Captain Daniel I. Schenck was the key to reclaiming the
identities of two Micah Williams portraits that had been unidentified for more than
sixty years (Catalogue Nos. 16 and 17). A 2009 visit to the Everhart Museum of Natural
History, Science and Art in Scranton, Pennsylvania, proved most exciting when it became
immediately clear that the Everhart’s pastel portrait of an unknown man was virtually
identical to the oil portrait of Daniel. The companion portrait of the woman was then
identified as Daniel’s wife Catherine.
As an artist, Williams provided duplicate copies of his portraits for family members on
several occasions, all in pastel. Daniel I. Schenck’s likeness is the first and, currently,
only known example where the artist used his later talent in oil portraiture to provide
a replica of an earlier pastel work.
cAtAlogue no. 59
Captain Daniel I. Schenck
(1777-1845)
Oil on canvas
Monmouth County, New Jersey,
circa 1830-1832
41 x 34 1 ⁄2 inches
Monmouth County Historical Association:
Gift of George and Mary Lou Strong, 2012
2012.8.1
1. The Jewish Heritage in American Folk Art (New York, NY: The Jewish Museum, 1984) 47.
2. John Noble Wilford, “How Epidemics Helped Shape the Modern Metropolis,” New York Times, April 15, 2008.
cAtAlogue no. 60
Girl in White with Cherries
Oil on canvas
New York, New York, circa 1830-1832
46 ³⁄8 x 28 1 ⁄2 inches
Collection of Zimmerli Art
Museum at Rutgers University,
Gift of Anna I. Morgan
59.012.001
This breathtaking portrait of an
unknown little girl holding a woven
basket of cherries is the most ambitious
of Micah Williams’ oil portraits during
his years in New York. In detail, scope,
and composition, Girl in White with
Cherries reveals the extent to which
Micah Williams had mastered the
medium of oil. The artist placed the
subject within a clearly-defined room
setting, with an elaborate woven rug
and a stylish rush-seated side chair upon
which rests a small pewter bowl with a
cluster of cherries. Williams handled the
foreshortening of the little girl’s arms
and hands particularly well, indicating
his accomplishment as an artist.
The portrait descended within the
Williams family and was at one time
owned by Micah’s eldest daughter, Eliza
Williams Nafey. Anna I. Morgan, great
granddaughter of the artist, recalled
that the little girl was the daughter of
Jewish parents who commissioned the
portrait in 1832. (1) A serious cholera
epidemic in that year swept through
the city, and the family never returned
for the portrait. It may have been
the cholera epidemic that prompted
the Williams family’s return to New
Brunswick the same year. During the
epidemic 3,515 New York residents
died of cholera. (2)
92 Micah Williams: Portrait Artist Micah Williams: Portrait Artist 93