Overview
Portrait of Eleonora Susette is a portrait painting by the Dutch painter Jeremias Schultz (1723–1800), created in 1775. Initially, little was known about the painting when it was acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2020. Both the identity of the sitter and the artist had been lost to time, and the painting bore the general title Portrait of a Lady Holding an Orange Blossom. Following years of research, the sitter was identified as Eleonora Susette, an enslaved woman from the former Dutch colony of Berbice (present-day Guyana).
Source: wikipedia,
available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Artist
Jeremias Schultz (1723–1800) was a Dutch painter, illustrator, and etcher. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1723, and around 1743, he moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he started his painting career. In addition, he was a teacher in the apprenticeship of his cousin, Johan Christoffel Schultsz, and artists P.J. Rink, Arend Alans, and Isaac Cordes Jansz. Schultz's work primarily contained portraits of people from Amsterdam, Deventer, and Kampen. Between 1750 and 1781, he painted several portraits, which can be found with his other works in museum collections worldwide. A portrait of…
Source: wikipedia,
available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Research
In 2020, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) acquired the portrait of a young woman with funds of the European Curatorial Committee. At that time, the identity of the portrayed woman and the artist were unknown (apart from the barely readable signature "J.Schul...fec"). Over a number of years, researchers commissioned by the AGO studied the painting in depth, conducting source research and seeking advice from experts in 18th-century European colonial and fashion history, and botany. A major breakthrough came with the rediscovery in an old auction catalogue of a companion portrait of a young man…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Source: wikipedia,
available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
