From time to time, one of the benefits of having an archive of your photographs online is someone out of the blue will contact you with a revelation.
Left: “Jean Walker Simpson with Rob Roy, her West Highland White Terrier”, 1909, oil on canvas portrait by Joaquín Sorolla, Spanish:1863-1923. Courtesy of a private collection. Right: “Jean Walker Simpson with Rob Roy, her West Highland White Terrier”, The Misses Selby, American, born England, (Emily Selby: 1868-1915? & Lillian Selby 1866-1964) platinum print, 1910-15, image: 16.7 x 12.0 cm | support: 18.2 x 12.5 cm (unmounted). From: PhotoSeed Archive
To wit, historian Robert Bagnall contacted me last week with news a portrait by the fashionable Fifth Ave. photographers The Misses Selby in my collection: “Woman with her West Highland White Terrier” actually had a painted twin.
What you see here, next to the Selby photograph, is that revelation: the oil portrait “Jean Walker Simpson with Rob Roy, her West Highland White Terrier“. (my title) From a private collection, and with our thanks to reproduce it here, it was painted by the Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) in 1909. The painting is signed and dated in the lower left corner by Sorolla and seen here cropped to the inner part of its gilded frame.
Robert Bagnall’s research into the subject of the work- Jean Walker Simpson-lead him to discover she lived at:
“926 Fifth Avenue. Her parents, John Woodruff Simpson and Kate Seney Simpson, were noted art collectors – among other things, the first major American collectors of Rodin’s work and early patrons of Steichen, whose studio was across the street from the Selbys.”
He further informed me the dog’s name was Rob Roy, and the Simpson family purchased him in Scotland in 1908. (no knowledge if the dog’s namesake and personality lived up to the legend of his Scottish outlaw folk hero)
Another interesting tidbit: the famous American photographer Gertrude Käsebier photographed Joaquín Sorolla c. 1908, possibly around the same time as the Misses Selby portrait here. That work can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Although perhaps only a young teen in this portrait, Jean Walker Simpson’s (1897-1980) legacy endures to this day, after establishing the John Woodruff Simpson Memorial Library in East Craftsbury VT when her father passed in 1920. Her library legacy continues to grow, with it becoming a vibrant community resource and driving force in the cultural life of East Craftsbury.
