Salisbury portrait heads to New York museum

SALISBURY — The Salisbury Association is loaning a painting to the American Folk Art Museum in New York, but first the portrait had to come off the wall of the Academy Building.

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, Caleb Von Gardey and Paul Guerino of Northeast Transit Fine Art Services of Waterville, New York, arrived to collect the 1844 portrait of Maria Birch Coffing and Jane Elizabeth Winslow, painted by Edwin White.

The painting shows Maria Coffing in the foreground and, behind her, a young Black woman looking out from a doorway. Both women lived in Salisbury. Maria’s husband, John Churchill Coffing, was an ironmaster; Winslow, known as Jennie, came to live with the Coffings as a child and remained with the family for decades.

The museum selected the portrait for an exhibition on how girls and young Black women were represented in early American art. It aims to draw attention to their often-overlooked lives.

“We are honored by this special opportunity to share Jane Winslow’s representation and her story with our visitors,” said Emelie Gevalt, the museum’s deputy director and chief curatorial and program officer.

The Salisbury Association acquired the portrait in 2012. It was restored by Val Michalski of Egremont, Massachusetts, who had previously restored a companion portrait of John Coffing. It was a difficult task. At the time, Michalski described the painting’s condition as “quite appalling.”

At some point, the painting had been revarnished with a substance that resisted Michalski’s array of solvents.

“I was stymied,” he said. “I had one technique left.”
He used a very small scalpel to physically lift the varnish off. As he painstakingly worked the size 15 scalpel under the layer, “Lo and behold — the varnish just shattered.”

From that point, the process went fairly quickly. He was able to use a bigger scalpel, a size 20.
“You could take a leg off with that one.”

The shattered varnish came off easily, but it left a faint gray haze and a couple of damaged areas that had been touched up with black wax.

Removing the varnish made the young woman in the background easier to see. Michalski called Katherine Chilcoat of the Salisbury Association, who was also Salisbury’s town historian.

Regina Madigan had researched and appraised the painting for the association before the restoration.

“I almost fainted” when she saw the clearer image of the young Black woman, she said.
Madigan said Black people were included in some American portraits of the period, but were usually both thematically and literally apart from the main subject — working in a field in the background, for example.

In this painting, Winslow is physically close to Maria. Michalski described her expression as “very caring but also commanding.”

The association’s research identified her as Jane Elizabeth Winslow. Orphaned at about age 5, Jennie joined the Coffing household around 1830. The 1840 census lists a free Black person in the household whom the association believes was Winslow.

The 1850 and 1860 censuses list her by name. She stayed in the Salisbury house for several years after Maria died in 1865 and later married Egbert Lee.

According to Chilcoat, John Coffing was 37 and a widower with four children when he married Maria Birch, a 30-year-old schoolteacher, in 1813. Coffing made the first move in the courtship with a letter.

“Miss Birch, as the first advance belongs to the part that I am, this is to directly inform you madam that I have it in contemplation to make some pertinent propositions to you,” he wrote.
Maria replied: “I am bound to tell you that my heart is buried with a man who lies I know not where, but if you still wish it, I will marry you, and be a mother to your children to the very best of my ability.”

Getting her portrait to New York began with a slight detour caused by faulty internet directions. There was another delay when the transporters reached the Academy Building and realized they did not have the right wrench.

Regular human directions to Herrington’s hardware store in Lakeville were supplied, and they returned in 15 minutes.

The men carefully lifted the portrait off the wall, placed it on thick plastic sheeting and bundled it up. Outside on Academy Street, a specially built crate lined with black foam awaited.

The painting fit snugly inside.

Von Gardey said the truck’s cargo area is controlled for temperature and humidity. The men strapped in the crate and were on their way to New York by 11 a.m.

The portrait will be part of Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art, which runs from Oct. 9 through Feb. 28.

Caleb Von Gardey (kneeling) and Paul Guerino carefully fit the 1844 portrait into a custom-built crate.Patrick L. Sullivan