Beschreibung:

Southern School/South Carolina (First Half 18th Century) "Portrait of Mrs. Mary Ellen Clendinen Hemingway, nee Myers (1802-1843), of South Carolina", ca. 1825-1835 oil on canvas unsigned. Framed. 35" x 31", framed 42-3/4" x 38" 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: Mary Ellen Myers was born at Fort Marion Plantation in 1802, into a socially prominent, wealthy, and political South Carolina family. Her father, David Myers, was a Colonel in the War of 1812, and was involved in the state legislature. Her mother, Phalby Mills, was from a family with Loyalist leanings; her father had sided with the English in the Revolutionary War, ultimately attaining the commission of a Major in the British Army. After narrowly avoiding capture, he astutely forged alliances with the emerging local government. Both maternal and paternal sides of the family owned numerous plantations in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Mississippi. What little is known about Mary Ellen reveals a woman of abundant charm and grace, and of a decidedly artistic nature. Described as a great beauty with dark auburn tresses and flashing black eyes, she was also well-educated and received a surprisingly comprehensive education for a young lady of her time. She attended the Morovian School of Salem (now Salem Academy/College), only the second school of higher education for girls founded in the country. While at the Academy she studied drawing and several examples of her fine watercolor work was preserved by her family for generations. One of the most endearing anecdotes concerning Mary Ellen is that she danced with General Lafayette at a ball in Columbia during his whirlwind 1825/6 tour of the states – while wearing white satin slippers adorned with the General’s hand-painted portrait! Considering what we know of her and her artistic pursuits, one wonders if the portraits were by her own hand. Several years after the death of her first husband, Mary Ellen wed Dr. William Hemmingway and the couple relocated to Fleetwood, one of her family’s plantations in Hind’s County, Mississippi. Fleetwood was known for its impressive and impeccably maintained gardens and grounds; bequeathed to her daughter, it was eventually sold to the brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and was ultimately burned to the ground by Federal troops. Mary Ellen died in 1843, while travelling between two of her Mississippi properties and was interred in a local cemetery. In 1893, her grandson had her remains relocated to a family cemetery.