Southern School (First Quarter 18th Century)

Southern School/South Carolina
(First Quarter 18th Century)

"Portrait of Robert Clendinen (1784-1830), of Yorkville, South Carolina", ca. 1820-1825

oil on canvas
unsigned.
Framed.
34-1/2" x 30-1/2", framed 42" x 38-1/4"

Provenance: With the sitters, to their daughter Nancy Clendinen Catchings (1821- 1891); to her son General Thomas Clendinen Catchings (1847-1898); to his son Oliver Whitehead Catchings (1873-1916); to his daughter Josephine Elizabeth Catchings Thomas (1900-1988); to her daughter Josephine Elizabeth Thomas Collins Watkins (1924-1992); to her son Frederick Hunter Collins III (b. 1949).

Literature: Mrs. Thomas Nelson Carter Bruns, Louisiana Portraits, New Orleans, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1975, p. 60.

Notes: Robert Clendinen was a prominent attorney and statesman who served in Congress as a senate delegate of the district of York and married Mary Ellen Myers, a landed debutant from Mississippi. Clendinen died prematurely in 1830, and was later characterized by fellow lawyer and judge Belton O'Neal:
"He received from nature much quickness of intellect and sound judgment, which by judicious application in youth he had made most effective instruments to his success…He was the kind and indulgent protector of the younger members of the bar, specially of those who unfortunately had their opportunity circumscribed by poverty and the absence of influential patronage…Had he lived, he might have risen to the highest dignities of the state”
Dimensions: 38.25 x 42 in
Condition Report: Canvas wax-relined. Inpainting repairs detected under UV light mainly to the jacket, background, including along an old horizontal crease-fold in upper background. Face and hand appear original and untouched. Faint craquelure. Frame with minor losses to gesso.