SIR JAMES JEBUSA SHANNON
American (1862–1923)

Eliza Anthony Hoppin Gammell

Signed and dated J.J. SHANNON/ 1905 
Oil on canvas
72 x 48 inches (183 x 122 cm)
Framed: 80½ x 56½ inches (204.5 x 143.5 cm)

This work was exhibited alongside a portrait of the sitter’s daughter, Virginia Gammell Cross, at an exhibition of portraits by Shannon at Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1906. The reviewer for the New York Times wrote, “The dress in the portrait of Miss Virginia Gammell of Providence is vividly, richly wrought by clear, deft strokes that sometimes make one think of Sargent... So likewise is the dress of Mrs. Robert I. Gammell full of spirit and wisdom in the deft rendering of the stuff” (New York Times, March 6, 1906, p. 5).

Eliza Anthony Hoppin Gammell (1859-1938) of Providence, Rhode Island was married to Mr. Robert Ives Gammell (1852-1915). The sitter’s maternal great-grandfather was William Jones of Newport, who was a captain in Colonel Lippitt’s Rhode Island regiment until it was disbanded in 1777. He served as a marine on the Providence until she was captured at Charleston. The Gammells, a prominent banking family in Providence, also spent much of their time in Newport.

Provenance
Virginia Gammell Cross, Providence, Rhode Island
Thence by descent

Exhibited
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Recent Portraits by Mr. J.J. Shannon, A.R.A., 1906, no. 4
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Our Gilded Age, November 18, 2023 - March 10, 2024, p. 24, illustrated

Literature
“Portraits by Shannon, A.R.A.,” New York Times, March 6, 1906, p. 5
“Art Notes,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 13, 1906, p. 4, “Notable also for brush handling are the portraits of ... Mrs. Robert I. Gammell and Miss Virginia Gammell, a sparkling young beauty, with roses all round her and roses on her dress.”
Christian Brinton, "A Painter of Fair Women," Munsey's Magazine, vol. XXXV, no. 11, May 1906, p. 137, illustrated
Barbara Dayer Gallati, Portraits of Artistry and Artifice: The Career of Sir James Shannon [1992 Ph.D. thesis, City University of New York], Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2014, p. 349
Mark Murray, “A Providence Portrait by J.J. Shannon,” Antiques and The Arts Weekly, May 6, 2022, p. 10, illustrated

$75,000

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