Nelson Cook (Malta, Saratoga County, New York 1808 – Saratoga Springs, New York, 1892)
Portrait of Georgeanna M. V. Kingsley

Portrait of Georgeanna M. V. Kingsley

Oil on canvas.

Measures: 77 x 62 cm (canvas).

Signature and date (back): “Painted by Nelson Cook.- / Rome, N.Y, 1880”.

Nelson Cook was an American painter specialized in portrait painting. His works are kept in different American museums, institutions, and private collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art (James Merrill Cook and his wife Anna Cady Cook, 1840), Union College Collection (Thomas Jefferson Marvin, c. 1839), Shelburne Museum of Vermont (Little Dandy, 1840), Historical Society of Saratoga Springs (Reuben Hyde Walworth, 1840), Sheffield Historical Society (Rev. James Bradford, 1847), Genesee Country Village and Museum, NY (Millard Powers Fillmore, an American Sportsman, c. 1850) or Canton Museum of Art, OH (Mrs. Naramore, 1855), among others.

The son of a cabinetmaker, his parents, Joseph Cook and Mary Ann Tolman settled in Malta around 1800, coming from Wallingford, the original place of the family. During his youth, Nelson Cook helped his older brother in the furniture-making business, and that one provided some financial support to the painter to-be. In the 1830s, the painter settled in Canada, where he presented his first portraits in a group exhibition celebrated in Toronto in 1834, together with some painters of the Canadian school, such as Paul Kane y James Hamilton. In October 1837, having claimed in an autograph letter from said Canadian city to have health problems, he settled with his family in different towns in New York state like Rochester and Buffalo. Back in Saratoga in the late 1850s, he joins the innovative school for women Temple Grove Seminary as an art teacherse.

His health problems continued while he lived in Rome (NY, 10 Liberty Street), where he resided from 1875 to 1887. It was during his stay in this town when he painted this female portrait, as witnessed by the signature, the insciption and the date on the back of the canvas: “Painted by Nelson Cook. Rome, N.Y, 1880”. The portrayed woman, Georgeanna M. Vogell Kingsley (13 June 1837, Utica, NY – 15 June 1919, Rome, NY), Reverend Henry Vogell’s daughter, married the prominent doctor Willey Josiah Pascal Kingsley (9 July 1924, Frankfort, NY – 26 January 1912) on 4 December 1860. Vogell, settled as a surgeon in Rome in 1856, specialized in fight against cancer and founded an oncology hospital in the town three years later. His important professional career led him to hold the following positions in the town: vice president of The Central New York Institution for Deaf Mutes (1875-1895), president of Roma Iron Works and The Rome Brass and Copper Company, vice president of Rome Cemetery Association y The Jervis Literary Association and mayor of the town of Rome (1895-1899). Georgeanna, who outlived his husband by deseven years, lies next him in Rome cemetery (Oneida County, NY, sect. H, grave #3).

From the pictorial point of view, the portrayed woman poses with half a bust in front of the viewer; she is sitting on a wooden armchair or small sofa with dark green upholstery. Her hairstyle shows a headdress with chained pieces, which ties his short hair. On the neck she wears a jewel from which a gold chain hangs on her chest, a proof of her well-off family standing.

On the canvas, Cook showed both Mrs. Kingsley’s personality and psychology, whom undoubtedly met and no doubt he knew and had dealings with. The light complexion of her face stands out from the background; the artist placed his model in an interior with a neutral background for greater pictorial enhancement. There is a green knotted drapery curtain to match the furniture upholstery, in front of a diffuse fragment of wall or door.

This painting must have matched with the portrait Nelson Cook made of doctor J.P. Kingsley, Georgeanna’s husband, in 1879, an original painting today missing. The canvas we present here has been recently restored. Its state of conservation is very good.

Medidas:

62 x 77 cm