John Wesley Jarvis (British, 1781-1840, act. New Orleans, 1821-1834), "Portrait of Samuel Chambers Bell (b. 1805), husband of Eulalie Longer (b. 1811), New Orleans", oil on canvas, unsigned, artist stamp en verso (now obscured), 30 in. x 25 in., antique frame Provenance: Descended in the family of the sitter. Note: At about the age of five, the precocious John Wesley Jarvis was brought from his native Northumberland to Philadelphia, where he worked with the engraver Edward Savage (1761-1817). In 1801, at the age of twenty, Jarvis moved with Savage to New York. After a brief partnership with the painter Joseph Wood (c. 1778-1830) and a sojourn in Baltimore from 1810 to 1813, for the next two decades, Jarvis became the foremost portrait painter in New York. Jarvis and fellow artist Henry Inman (1801-1846) spent the winters of 1820-21 and 1821-22 in New Orleans, when they were frequently visited by John James Audubon (1785-1851); Jarvis continued those visits alone in 1828-29, 1829-30, and 1833-34. At the beginning of the last visit in New Orleans, Jarvis suffered a stroke—he had a notoriously undisciplined lifestyle—and returned to New York, where he died on January 12, 1840. Jarvis’s much-praised naturalism, objectivity, and liveliness are beautifully exemplified in this striking portrait.
The sitter, Samuel Bell, is remembered for the very fact of his marriage: his wife of 1828 was one of the immensely famous and widely celebrated eight Longer sisters of New Orleans—her sister, Odile, married Edgar Degas’s (1834-1917) uncle, Michel Musson. Odile’s and Michel’s daughter, Mathilde Musson, married the nephew of this present sitter, William A. Bell, who sat as a model in Degas’s "Portraits in a Cotton Office, New Orleans" of 1873.
Ref.: Driscoll, John and Jane Turner, ed. “Jarvis.” Grove Dictionary of Art. London: Oxford University Press, 1996, vol. 17, p. 450; Mahé, John A. and Rosanne McCaffrey, eds. Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists 1718-1918. New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1987, pp. 201-202; Feigenbaum, Gail, et al. Degas and New Orleans. New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1999, pp. 222-235 and 275-288.
