In the Beginning
Pook & Pook presents at auction the renowned collection of John A. and Judith C. Herdeg of Mendenhall, Pennsylvania. The Herdegs were dedicated collectors with a lifelong passion for 18th century history and decorative art. Over their lives, they built one of the finest collections of Colonial American portraits in private hands. The Herdeg Collection is an important record of early Americans and artists.
Early portraits were available to the few who could afford it. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, burgeoning trade expanded the merchant and middle classes, expanding the number of Americans desiring to mark their achievements by recording their likenesses. Personal aspects such as social position, occupation, accomplishments, and character, were factored in to the composition of their portraits. Early American portrait painters collected by John and Judy Herdeg range from the very earliest to the brilliance of John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart.
The artist known as The Pollard Limner (Boston, fl. 1690-1730) is identified on the basis of his 1721 portrait of Anne Pollard. He probably had no formal training as a painter, but painted in the Baroque Stuart tradition of the period. In the 1720’s, he was Boston’s leading portrait artist. The Herdeg portrait is of an ancestor of Judy’s, Elizabeth Bill Henshaw. Elizabeth was from a wealthy Boston merchant family and is portrayed before an Arcadian landscape.
Gerardus Duyckinck (New York, 1695-1746) is another early painter from New Amsterdam, from a family of glazier-limners that became America’s first dynasty of painters. He painted the prominent Dutch settlers of New York. Like much else in New Netherlands, his style was drawn from current Dutch culture, and employed a greater use of light and shadow to model the figure. In this portrait, in the words of John Herdeg, a young lady “is presented as a princess of the New World, with the untamed wilderness over the garden wall behind her.”
Works of both early artists are exceedingly rare.
John Smibert (American/British, 1688-1751) was America’s first professional painter. Trained in late Baroque portraiture in London and Italy, he was an established London artist. Invited to travel to Bermuda to teach painting at a new college for colonists, he sailed in 1728. Funding for the school never came through, and after a year of waiting, the project failed. Smibert then travelled to Boston. His 1729 arrival is regarded as a pivotal moment in American art. His superior skill made him one of the foremost portrait artists in colonial America. Boston’s wealthy merchant families flocked to him for their portraits. His studio displayed both his own works and old master copies, and extended his influence, remaining open over fifty years after his death. A talented architect, it was Smibert who drew the plans for Faneuil Hall, Boston’s first public market.
The portraits collected by John and Judy Herdeg trace the beginning and development of painting in America, and preserve for posterity the faces and ideals of early Americans.
Join us on January 16th and 17th, 2025, for our Americana & International sale to view the Herdeg Collection, as well as other important collections and estates.
By: Cynthia Beech Lawrence
