Lot 213: Attributed to George Peter Alexander Healy (American

Attributed to George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813-1894), "Portrait of a Lady", c. 1855-60, oil on canvas, unsigned, 36 in. x 29 in., very elaborate original carved giltwood frame, verso of top rail with an extensive original framers' label: "Jones, Wood [...] / Gilders and Colormen[?] / [Looking Gla]ss, Portrait, & Picture [Framers] / [...] Manufacturers. / [Paint]ings & Li[thographs] / [...] Wood & Gilt Mo[ldings] / Wholesale and Retail / No. 89 Montgomery Street, near California / San Francisco."
Note: This spectacular portrait would evidently have been painted either in Chicago-where Healy lived from 1855 to 1867-or in New Orleans (where the artist definitely worked in 1860-1861, and perhaps also during two or three winters in the late 1850s), then taken to San Francisco to be framed. The contemporary framers were a firm established in the Parrot Granite Block on the NW corner of Montgomery and California Streets, which stood from 1852 to 1926; its three substantial stories were not materially harmed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but the structure was eventually demolished to make way for the Financial Center Building. The sitter was doubtless a prominent member of San Francisco society during the Civil War years.
Every hallmark of Healy's well-known style is present in this painting, lot 213. Almost uniquely among American artists of the period, he favored the extended format of a three-quarter-length sitting figure. He was also partial to carefully-delineated chairs, of which a typical model is included here, the example with tufted upholstery behind the Lady. The Lady's coiffure is one of Healy's trademarks, and her superb black lace shawl, thrown negligently over the rich silks of her dress, has an absolutely precise parallel in the portrait (c. 1853) of Governor Sharkey's Wife, in a private collection in Mississippi (which also happens to be exactly the same size). Very similar white lace trim adorns Healy's monumental 1860 portrait of the Confederate socialite Myra Knox Semmes, in a private Louisiana collection.
Memorably combining diplomatic manners and great personal charm with obvious skill and exceptional speed, G. P. A. Healy of Boston became a truly international celebrity, whose natural talents and affable character appealed equally to royalty, gentry, and patriots. He was encouraged by Thomas Sully and patronized by Mrs. Harrison Grey Otis to make the first of his (eventually thirty) transatlantic crossings, to study in Paris with Baron Gros (and later with Thomas Couture). He became one of the favorite painters of King Louis-Philippe of France, and the King and Queen of Romania; after long residences in Paris, London, and New York he settled in Chicago, where he made a specialty of painting generals, statesmen, and presidents (his 1864 Seated Lincoln, at the Newberry Library there, is one of his most celebrated works). His fame only intensified over the remaining thirty years of his life, and it has aptly been remarked that his cosmopolitanism prefigured and rivaled that of John Singer Sargent in the next generation.
References: Sally Mills, "Healy, G.P.A." Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., 34 vols., London, 1996, vol. 14, pp. 277-278; Franklin Kelly, et al., American Paintings of the 19th Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1996, pp. 298-300; Colonial Dames, Louisiana Portraits, New Orleans, 1975, pp. 146 (Jurey), 175 (Matthews), 228 (Semmes); Colonial Dames, Mississippi Portraiture, Laurel, MS, 1987, pp. 46 (Blewett), 186 (Metcalfe), 236 (Sharkey).