Mystery Uncovered in 19th Century Painting

As the adage goes, history is written by the victors — and in art, portraiture is the visual history told to us by the financial victors, the wealthiest and most influential who sought to immortalize their faces. Art can tell stories, but it can also obscure them. At Salisbury School, a private boys preparatory school in Salisbury, Conn., history teacher Rhonan Mokriski has been leading his students to uncover the hidden stories in local history in a course called “Coloring Our Past.” Students are challenged to investigate lesser-known accounts of Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic history in Northwestern Connecticut and The Berkshires. This month, some of Mokriski’s students have shared their research with the public over Zoom presentations, including a report shared through Scoville Memorial Library by Salisbury junior Joseph Chiarenza on The Winslow Mystery.

The mystery surrounds a once seemingly innocuous pre-Civil War era portrait by Edwin White.

Originally from Hampshire County, Mass, White studied in Paris under François Edouard Picot at the Academie des Beaux-Arts and later at The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a German fine arts academy and was employed as an instructor at The National Academy of Design in New York City. He is perhaps best known for his dramatic American historical renderings — “The Signing of the Compact in the Cabin of the Mayflower” or “Washington Resigning His Commission” — but in 1844 he was commissioned to paint Maria Birch Coffing, the second wife of John Churchill Coffing, as well as a portrait of Mr. Coffing himself. In the collection of The Salisbury Association, the historical society writes that “John Churchill Coffing formed a partnership with John Milton Holley in 1810, Holley & Coffing, the leading iron masters in the region. In 1818, it became the Salisbury Iron Co.”

Both portraits were restored between 2010 and 2012 by Berkshires-based oil painting specialist Valentine Michalski, whose thorough cleaning revealed much more than just a depiction of the seated Mrs. Coffing. Michalski writes of the extensive erosion the painting had incurred, “When it arrived, the painting had been damaged by several ill-advised and unsuccessful attempts at cleaning, leaving the varnish with opaque white streaks over most of the surface. Misguided efforts to hide the results of these ministrations by overpainting with some sort of tarry  substance failed to effect an improvement.” Behind the varnish was a second figure, peering behind a door, the youthful Black face of Jane Winslow.

Winslow, born circa 1825, was a free woman of color who lived and possibly worked in the Coffing home in Salisbury, although the exact nature of her place within the family remains ambiguous. She outlived Maria Coffing and later married a formerly enslaved man from Georgia who became a reverend at The Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Great Barrington, Mass., the first Black church in Berkshire County. Today, the Zion Church is the home of The W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Freedom and Democracy.

Much remains unknown about the life of Jane Winslow and her full experience with the Coffing family in Salisbury. Edwin White’s painting provokes many questions simply by how unusual it is for the time — Jane Winslow’s prominence in the painting alone implies she played a large role in Mrs. Coffing's life, even if the partially obscured background placement does not radiate with equality. The painting entices but does not fully explain. In some regards, it is Salisbury’s version of David Martin’s 18th-century portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, two cousins, one Black, one White, which for centuries has inspired speculations, even as the real-life details of Dido Belle’s societal role remain murky.

Martin’s 1779 painting remains a rarity in the Western historical record of fine art, depicting the two women of different races as equals — as opposed to White's depiction of Winslow, who despite her visibility, is nevertheless painted in a somewhat servile position. In 2021, The United Kingdom made the rare discovery of an even earlier 1650s painting by an anonymous artist depicting two women, one Black and one White, side by side as companions in similar dresses. Currently being researched, its significance highlights that the study of Black history remains an act of looking for what has been hidden from view.

Both the portraits of John Churchill Coffing and Jane Winslow with Maria Coffing remain in the collection of The Salisbury Association and are on display at The Academy Building exhibit space.

Maria Coffing and Jane Winslow by Edwin White Courtesy of Salisbury Association

Maria Coffing and Jane Winslow by Edwin White Courtesy of Salisbury Association

Maria Coffing and Jane Winslow by Edwin White Courtesy of Salisbury Association

  

Maria Coffing and Jane Winslow by Edwin White Courtesy of Salisbury Association