Description
Margaret Siddons Kintzing (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing) is a slightly more than half-length view of a seated young woman. Her blue-gray eyes are directed at the viewer, and her pale skin has pink highlights, especially on the cheeks and chin. Her light-brown hair is parted in the middle, and two ringlets curl at either side of the brow; the rest of her hair is pulled back into a low bun, revealing her long neck and her proper left ear.

The sitter wears a high-waisted white dress with a low, square neckline and short, puffy sleeves. Sully used broad brushstrokes highlighted with impasto for the dress, and he painted the shadows in its folds a light blue.

The sitter’s proper right arm is extended at her side, and her right hand, with its fingers curved toward the palm, rests in her lap. Her proper left arm is delicately positioned on the gilded and carved armrest of what appears to be a backless sofa with a yellow-gold tufted bolster. The armrest consists of a long, curved, feathered neck and head of a bird, whose left eye is visible. The pupil, beak markings, and feathers contain impasto. Hanging from the beak is a large bale; touches of red paint highlight the yellow-gold color of the beak and the bale.

Light enters from the upper right. The bird’s head and Margaret Siddons Kintzing’s left hand cast a shadow on her white dress that resembles an open beak. The lower-left corner of the portrait—including the sitter’s lap, right hand, forearm, and the column—is in shadow. A red curtain behind her is pulled back to reveal the base of a fluted marble column at the bottom left. There is evidence of an underdrawing along the base of the column. Just behind the column is a bit of blue sky filled with pink-tinged white clouds.

Biography
Margaret Siddons (1791–1868) was the seventh and youngest child of Amy Ware (1755–1796) and Edward Siddons (1750–about 1793) of Salem, New Jersey.¹ In June 1777, soon after completing service as a sergeant in the Salem County militia during the Revolutionary War, Margaret’s father received a license to open a public house in Salem. He remained an innkeeper and taverner until his death.² On December 19, 1793, Amy Siddons married Lott Randolph.³ She died on March 26, 1796, when Margaret was five. The following year, the girl’s maternal uncle Jacob Ware (1752–1817), of Greenwich, New Jersey, became her guardian as well as the guardian of her sister Mary, and brother Edward.⁴

On May 15, 1811, Margaret married Benjamin Harbeson Kintzing (about 1790–1825), the eldest son of Abraham Kintzing (1763–1835), a successful Philadelphia shipping merchant, and Margaret Harbeson Kintzing (about 1764–1804). They were married by the Reverend Ashbel Green at Philadelphia’s Second Presbyterian Church.⁵ Sully painted Margaret’s portrait the next year. She and Benjamin had at least five children.⁶ In 1813 he and his younger brother Abraham were in business with their father. Benjamin worked as a shipping merchant and sea captain until his untimely death, in March 1825.⁷ Orphaned as a child, Margaret Siddons Kintzing became a widow at age thirty-four.

With a number of young children to support, she opened a dry-goods store on Walnut Street below Eighth Street.⁸ It was not uncommon for a widow to keep her late husband’s business running, and Margaret’s store obviously was related to Benjamin’s mercantile activities; however, it was located apart from her Kintzing in-laws’ businesses.⁹ Presumably, she operated the dry-goods store for at least two years; in 1830 the city directory listed her simply as a gentlewoman.¹⁰ In an 1832 letter to a relative, Margaret’s father-in-law expressed his concern for her and her children:

I am obliged to apply thro Mr Macalister to the Bank of North America for a further accommodation to my son Ben^s family—the fourth son namely Charles is now looking out for a suitable situation for business. he is upwards of 13 & has had a decent education at the Franklin Institute. There is no absolute determination as to any particular business—the hardware & French business would be favorable—but perhaps there might be others more so—if any such should come within your view, I would thank you to mention it—he is now idle—I think him an orderly boy—Margaret K. has not yet changed her place of residence. I have advised her & wish much she would get to a more Central location & pay herself out for taking young gentlemen from the Public offices &c. which I think would be more advantageous to her—if you know of plain comfortable house, with a number of rooms, I will be much obliged to point it out to me.¹¹

Although he might ask other family members if they could help his daughter-in-law, Abraham’s finances prevented him from doing much for her himself. He died in 1835. His will specified that one-sixth of his modest estate go to Benjamin and Margaret’s children and instructed her to use the interest and dividends from that share to help support them while they were minors.¹²

Margaret lived with her sons Gustavus and William at different residences in Philadelphia from 1837 until 1842, the last year she was listed in the city directory.¹³ According to a family genealogy, she died in 1868.¹⁴ No obituary, death record, or will has been located in Philadelphia for her. It is possible that she remarried or moved out of the city.

Analysis
This painting entered the Worcester Art Museum’s collection in 1917. Purchased from Boston’s Brooks Reed Gallery, it was at the time identified as "Amy Siddons who married a Mr. Kintzing."¹⁵ When the work was included in Memorial Exhibition of Portraits by Thomas Sully, held at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1922, its title was changed to Miss Margaret Siddons, the identity of the sitter having by then been established as Margaret rather than her sister Amy.¹⁶ But since the portrait was painted in 1812, a year after Margaret and Benjamin’s wedding, the fully correct title is Margaret Siddons Kintzing (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing).

The art historian Charles Henry Hart informed Brooks Reed Gallery that no portrait of a Margaret or an Amy Siddons was noted in Sully’s "Account of Pictures," in which the artist recorded, from 1801 to 1871, the dates he started and finished a painting, its size, its title or the sitter’s name, and its price. Since Margaret was married when she sat for her portrait, she would have been identified in the "Account" by her married name.¹⁷ Moreover, Sully listed two kit-cat portraits—likenesses measuring approximately thirty-six by twenty-eight inches—of a "Mrs. Kinzing," painted in 1812; and these are matched in Hart’s published transcription of the accounts. ¹⁸

Hart, and then the Sully scholars Edward Biddle and Mantle Fielding, incorrectly identified these two "Mrs. Kinzing" portraits as being of Margaret Harbeson Kintzing, who was Margaret Siddons Kintzing’s mother-in-law and the wife of Abraham Kintzing. Although Sully produced three portraits of Abraham, he did not sit for the artist until 1815.¹⁹ Margaret Harbeson Kintzing died in 1804, and, as noted, the pair of pictures in Sully’s records are dated 1812. Although they could be posthumous images of Margaret Harbeson Kintzing, it is unlikely they would have been painted so long after her death but three years before her husband posed for Sully. If the "Account of Pictures" indicated that the two "Mrs. Kinzing" likenesses had been commissioned in 1815 and painted in the same size and format as Abraham Kintzing’s, it would be somewhat more probable that Sully copied the portraits from an earlier image of Kintzing’s late wife. ²⁰

Probably, the Worcester Art Museum’s portrait is one of the two Sully listed as "Mrs. Kinzing." The dates fit: Sully’s cipher and the year 1812 were discovered on back of the canvas before it received its 1979 lining treatment. Also, according to Sully’s journal, neither finished picture was delivered to Abraham Kintzing or to his children; if the family had commissioned portraits of a deceased wife and mother, it is likely that they would have taken delivery of them. In December 1812, Sully noted in his journal, "Mrs. Kensing, portrait sent to her house," which suggests the sitter was still living; he sent the other "Mrs. Kinzing, painted in wax . . . to Mrs. Harms."²¹

If the museum’s painting is indeed one of the "Mrs. Kinzing" portraits in Sully’s "Account of Pictures," then a second version has yet to be located. The first kit-cat, begun on August 19, 1812, was "painted in Wax." Sully recorded his observations on this practice:

I find wax is sometimes used by the English painters, which is prepared by boiling the honey comb and extracting the wax with care; next it is bleached in the sun. In order to mix it with mastic varnish, it is melted by itself and the mastic put to it. If a small lump is put with the white, all the other colours on the palette will partake of it—but no other liquid must be used while painting with this.²²

Because no wax can be detected on the painted surface of the museum’s portrait, it is doubtless the second likeness, which Sully started on September 23 and finished on November 16, 1812. ²³

As was often the case in early American art, Margaret Siddons’s wedding was the impetus to commission an artist to paint her portrait. Apparently, there is no companion picture of her husband by Sully. When Benjamin was a young man, he had sat to Sully’s friend and fellow Philadelphia artist Benjamin Trott (about 1770–1843) for a miniature portrait (fig. 1). However, Margaret’s older sister, Mary (1788–1867), who had married Israel Whelen in 1810, also posed for Sully in 1812, without her husband.

	Figure 1. Benjamin Trott, Benjamin Harbeson Kintzing, n.d., watercolor on ivory, 2 29/32 x 2 5/16 in. (7.4 x 5.9 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Mary E. Kintzing, 1956. (56.72). All rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Copyright notice.		Figure 2. Thomas Sully, Mary Siddons Whelen (Mrs. Israel Whelen), 1812, oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 37 1/4 in. (113 x 94.6 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Given by Mrs. Thomas J. Dolan.

Sully detailed his approach to portrait painting in Hints to Young Painters and the Process of Portrait Painting, published posthumously in 1873. "Six sittings of two hours each is the time I require," the artist wrote. In the first and second sittings, he did preparatory sketches of the sitter, with pencil or charcoal and then oils. These helped determine the pose and costume and were then transferred to the canvas with burnt umber.²⁵ Although no sketch for Margaret Siddons Kintzing (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing) has been located, there is evidence of an underdrawing along the base of the column at the lower left. Sully always positioned the sitter precisely on the canvas. For a bust-size image on a canvas measuring thirty by twenty-five inches, he recommended that the distance from the corner of the eye to the top of the canvas be about ten inches for a woman whose height was five feet three inches and nine and one-half inches for a man who stood about five feet ten inches. He adjusted this distance depending on the sitter’s height.²⁶

Sully brought out his palette for the third sitting. His final step for coloring the face was to add vermilion, which is evident in the cheeks and lips of Margaret Siddons Kintzing (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing). He typically painted the costume and background either from the life sketches or from direct observation of the sitter, but he also liked using a lay figure to assist with costume.²⁷ Sully insisted that the color of the background be either lighter or darker than the face and the costume; in this portrait, the sitter’s white dress and pale skin stand out against the rich red curtain and gray column in the background. Sully’s theatrical use of light also helps focus attention on the subject. One source of light enters from the upper right to playfully capture on her dress, in the form of an open beak, the combined shadow from her left hand and the bird’s head. The final sitting, in this and other Sully portraits, included the use of glazing colors for the shadows, hair, and drapery.²⁸

Sully occasionally represented sitters in furniture they owned, but the gilded and carved bird armrest in this painting is unusual both as a piece of furniture and as an object in his oeuvre.²⁹ The curving cylindrical bolster suggests it is probably a sofa or a small bench. Instead of painting the armrest in a single plane with the bird’s beak extended over the sitter’s lap, the artist took license and turned the bird’s head slightly toward the viewer. In contrast, the carved armrest in Sully’s portrait Mary Harvey Beck (Mrs. Paul Beck, Jr.) (1813, Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California) consists of a single curved plane of wood, a more plausible representation of a piece of furniture, such as a window seat. He positioned Mary Harvey Beck in a similar fashion to Margaret Siddons Kintzing—with her right arm on an armrest, albeit one of a simpler design.³⁰ Sully’s sketchbook (about 1810–20, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), contains designs for Empire-style lounges, chairs, and window seats; possibly he created this piece of furniture from a similar group of drawings. The bird carved on the armrest may well be an eagle, a reasonable choice for a Federal-style Philadelphia sofa. After it was incorporated on the official national seal in 1782, the eagle became an increasingly popular symbol and frequently appeared on furniture. Although the beak and head of this bird are eaglelike, the neck is not; perhaps it was intentionally elongated and stylized to emphasize an elegant curve.

Sully enjoyed a successful and busy year in Philadelphia in 1812. After he returned from his nine-month sojourn in London, two years earlier, his artistic improvements were noted and praised. For example, Benjamin Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol, reported to former President Thomas Jefferson, "Thos. Sully is certainly the first on the list of our portrait painters."³¹ In his "Account of Pictures" the artist recorded that, in 1812, he had executed thirty-seven paintings, to which he assigned a total value of $4,330; twenty-nine of these were portraits.³² At the Second Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, which opened on May 11 of that year, Sully exhibited nine portraits as well as The Capture of Major André and The Lady of the Lake (unlocated). In the July issue of The Port Folio the artist and critic George Murray individually reviewed four of Sully’s paintings in the exhibition and also listed the catalogue numbers of seven Sully portraits, praising their "ease and elegance of attitude" and the "richness and delicacy of colouring in them." Murray added that "although he sometimes deviates from nature, he seldom displeases."³³ Sully, who deliberately idealized his sitters, stated, "From long experience I know that resemblance in a portrait is essential; but no fault will be found with the artist, (at least by the sitter,) if he improve the appearance."³⁴

Sully’s portraits of young women are uniformly less individualized and more representative of an accepted type of female beauty. "The rosy hue that blooms so sweetly on thy cheek," the "glossy ringlets," and the "bosom’s heaving white"—all phrases from the contemporary poem "To a Coquette," authored by "W.," which appeared in the November 1811 issue of The Port Folio—could be describing the Sully portrait of Margaret Siddons Kintzing or that of her sister, Mary Siddons Whelen (fig. 2).³⁵ Although he placed the latter sitter in an imaginary landscape, her dress, hairstyle, and pose are similar to Margaret’s. The same elongated curving necks and willowy postures appear in Sully’s 1813 portrait Mary Sicard David (Mrs. Jean Terford David) (Cleveland Museum of Art) and Rebecca Mifflin Harrison McMurtie (Mrs. James McMurtie) and Her Son, William (1816–18, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania). In an article entitled "The Ladies of Philadelphia," a writer for The Port Folio, identified only as "L. C.," elaborated further on graceful feminine posture:

The ladies of this metropolis are justly celebrated for the possession of extraordinary charms. . . . A sweet and interesting expression of countenance, a wholesome ruddiness of complexion, blended with a skin delicately fair, a form graceful and majestic, with a deportment of the most perfect ease, yet full of dignity may be said emphatically to designate them.³⁶

As his career progressed, Sully was compared to Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), who likewise idealized his female sitters. An article on "North American Artists" in the September 1824 issue of the British magazine Somerset House Gazette, and Literary Museum put it thusly:

	Figure 3. Sir Thomas Lawrence, The Hon. Mrs. Foster Cunliffe-Offley, 1809, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm), Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Mr. Sully, who is the "Sir Thomas Lawrence" of America . . . after years of great assiduity, has become, without any question, one of the most beautiful portrait painters in the world. His general style is like that of Sir Thomas Lawrence, by whom he has profited greatly; in fact his composition, sentiment, and manner, are so much of the same character, now and then, that were it not for the touch, some of his portraits could not be distinguished from those of Sir Thomas. He is remarkably happy in his women.³⁷

In the portraits of the Siddons sisters and others, Sully repeatedly used the simple, short-sleeved, empire-waist dress, the shawl, and the elongated, curving neck that Lawrence included in his 1809 portrait The Hon. Mrs. Foster Cunliffe-Offley (fig. 3). For Mary Siddons Whelen (Mrs. Israel Whelen), Sully placed the sitter on a grassy knoll, below a tree; both the pose and the dramatic landscape recall the Cunliffe-Offley picture. In 1832 Sully noted that the English artist Gilbert Stuart Newton (1794–1835) "would like to see all portraits of women made beautiful and like if possible—on account of their costume, etc., they are the best subjects for a painter of portraits."³⁸ Obviously, Sully agreed—as his own work amply demonstrates.

Notes
1. Edward Siddons was the son of William and Hannah Siddons. Salem 1926, 67; Hinshaw 1938, 39. Amy (also spelled Amee) was the daughter of Thomas (1731–1769) and Margaret Reed Ware of Greenwich, New Jersey. She married Edward Siddons in Salem, New Jersey, on February 14, 1775. Ware 1935, 156–58.

2. Cushing and Sheppard 1883, 43; Stewart 1932, 19. The New Jersey Tax Ratables, Salem County, Salem Town, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, list Edward Siddons as a taverner for the years 1783, 1784, 1788, and 1789. The June 12, 1792, issue of the Brunswick Gazette announced a meeting "at the house of Edward Siddons, innkeeper in the town of Salem." As quoted in Wilson 1988, I, 378. The 1793 Tax Ratables list only Amy Siddons, since Edward had died by July 24, 1793, the date an inventory of his estate was taken. For his administration and inventory, see Salem County probate no. 2168Q, New Jersey State Archives.

3. See list of Salem County Clerk’s Office Marriages (Brides) in Alice Boggs, Librarian, Salem County Historical Society, Salem, N.J., to Laura K. Mills, June 5, 1998.

4. Wards for Edward, Mary, and Margaret Siddons of Salem County, N.J., April 17, 1797, lib. 37, p. 154, file 2183Q,, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton.

5. Second Presbyterian 1898, II, 329.

6. The children of Margaret Siddons and Benjamin H. Kintzing included Gustavus S., William (1817– ?), Sarah, Charles (1819–?), Matthew Ralston (1822–1893), and an infant who was stillborn and buried on September 15, 1824. See Beck 1991, 12; Second Presbyterian 1898, II, 468; Maria Kintzing Sperry for Abraham Kintzing, to John Barnes, July 31, 1832, Krewson Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, indicates that Charles was the fourth son; and Richard H. McIntyre, law office, New York, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 16, 1956.

7. Philadelphia City Directory 1813; Scharf and Westcott 1884, III, 2212. See Kintzing letters in Thomas Masters Papers, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del., and Thomas Masters Papers, New-York Historical Society, New York. For Benjamin Kintzing’s obituary, see Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, March 22, 1825.

8. Philadelphia City Directory 1828, 45; 1829, 104.

9. See Wilson 1992, chap. 4, "A ‘Man of Business’: The Widow of Means."

10. Philadelphia City Directory 1830, 104. Although the 1830 federal census listed a "Margaret Kintzing" as the head of a household living in Philadelphia’s south ward, the sitter in the portrait under discussion would have been thirty-nine at the time. The census does not include this age bracket for females in the household. Although it is possible that the census was in error, it is more likely that there was another Margaret Kintzing in Philadelphia. The 1820 federal census supports this conclusion; it includes a "Margaret Kintzing" as head of a household in ward two of Philadelphia. The sitter in the present portrait was not a widow at that time. See National Archives, microfilm reel 159 (1830 Census), p. 370, and microfilm reel 109 (1820 Census), p. 199.

11. Maria Kintzing Sperry for Abraham Kintzing, to John Barnes, July 31, 1832, Krewson Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I would like to thank Elizabeth Kintzing Beck, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Abraham Kintzing, for providing me with this reference.

12. Will of Abraham Kintzing, August 5, 1833, Philadelphia County Will Book 11, p. 446, no. 87.

13. Philadelphia City Directory 1837, 120; 1839, 137; 1840, 136; 1841, 45; 1842, 143.

14. Ware 1935, 158.

15. Charles Henry Hart to Brooks Reed Gallery, Boston, October 20, 1916.

16. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 1922, 63.

17. Hart to Brooks Reed Gallery.

18. Sully’s "Account of Pictures"; Hart 1909, 64.

19. Between December 12 and 18, 1815, Sully did "Two copies of Mr. Kinzings portrait"; he began the original Abraham Kintzing on April 6, 1815, finishing it on October 9 of that year. Sully’s "Account of Pictures," frame 19. The two copies of the portrait are owned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and by a Kintzing descendant; however, the original is unlocated. Sully delivered the three paintings to Kintzing’s children. See Sully’s "Journal," November and December 1815; and Torchia, Chotner, and Miles 1988, 146–50.

20. For Margaret Harbeson Kintzing’s death date, see Middle Ferry 1924, 71. Because Abraham Kintzing did not remarry, the portraits listed as "Mrs. Kinzing" could not be those of a second Mrs. Abraham Kintzing. And since his sons (Benjamin’s younger brothers) Abraham and Tench Coxe Kintzing did not marry until 1813 and 1815, respectively, their wives could not have been painted as "Mrs. Kinzing" in 1812.

21. Sully’s "Journal," December 1812, 15.

22. Sully’s "Hints for Pictures," 1809, frame 79.

23. The art historian Dorinda Evans incorrectly wrote that Sully applied a wax mixture before adding the final glaze to Margaret Siddons Kintzing (Mrs. Benjamin Kintzing). Evans 1993, 136, n. 5.

24. Sully’s "Account of Pictures," 1812, frame 16.

25. Sully 1873, 15.

26. Ibid., 37.

27. Sully’s "Hints for Pictures," November 5, 1835, frame 139.

28. Sully 1873, 16.

29. See Sully’s Bishop William White (1814, Washington Cathedral, Washington, D.C.) The chair in this portrait is still in Christ Church, Philadelphia, according to Fabian 1983, 62.

30. Thomas S. Michie, Curator of Decorative Arts, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, to Anne Popadic, March 29, 1999; Gerald W. R. Ward, Carolyn and Peter Lynch Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to Anne Popadic, May 17, 1999; Judy Guston, Curator, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, phone conversation with Laura K. Mills, June 2, 1999.

31. Benjamin Latrobe to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1811, as quoted in Miller 1991, 92.

32. Sully’s "Account of Pictures," 1812, frame 16.

33. M[urray] 1812, 25.

34. Sully 1873, 38.

35. W., "To a Coquette," The Port Folio 6: 5 (November 1811): 501–2.

36. L. C., "The Ladies of Philadelphia," The Port Folio 4: 6 (December 1810): 604–7.

37. North American Artists 1824a, 363. See also John Neal on Sully’s portraits of women in Randolph, A Novel (1823), as quoted in Dickson [1943], 5.

38. Sully’s "Hints for Pictures," May 22, 1832, frame 129.