Richard and William Jennys (FL. CA 1766-1801, FL. CA 1793-1807)

a label on the frame states: Mrs. Lazarus Ruggles (Hannah Bostwick (1736-1747)-Richard Jennys; her husband Lazarus Ruggles (1730-1797); in what appears to be the original frame and stretcher.

Descended in the Ruggles and Wright family to the previous owners.

Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York

The portraits of Lazarus Ruggles and Hannah Bostwick Ruggles, as well as the portraits of Jared Lane and Apphia Ruggles Lane were on loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1945. 

The pair of Ruggles portraits will be featured in an upcoming exhibit at The Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut, To Please Any Taste, April, 2008.

For further information, see Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Ralph Earl, The Face of the Young Republic, Yale University Press, 1991, pp. 59; 202-203; 205, 206.

relined; restretched
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Approximately sixteen portraits executed in New Milford between 1794 and 1795 have been assigned to William and Richard Jennys.  Of particular interest are the portraits that were executed for Jared Lane, which are documented in Lane's account book for 1795.  According to Lane's ledger William and Richard Jennys painted six bust length portraits, including the portraits of his in-laws, Lazarus and Hannah Bostwick Ruggles.  In 1796, Jared Lane commissioned Ralph Earl to paint portraits of himself and his wife, Apphia, the daughter of the Ruggles, along with a portrait of their newly built house in the Still River Neck district of New Milford.  (This painting was sold at Sotheby's January, 2004).  Earl and his wife boarded with the Ruggles while the Lane portraits were being painted.  The account book records the monies and in-kind payments that were made--including extensive outlays for spirits and rum.  They are listed in Jared Lane's account book: "paid Richard and William Jennys for varnishing."

"No biographical material has come to light concerning William Jennys.  There has been speculation that William Jennys emigrated from England in company with Richard Jennys, and it seems probable that the two men were in some way related.  Many more portraits are attributed to William than Richard, but both painted in the New Milford, Connecticut, area in the 1790's, at which time their work was quite similar in style.  Richard eventually traveled northward through central Massachussetts and Vermont across New Hampshire to the coastal town of Newburyport.  During the opening years of the nineteenth century he adopted a distinctive technique quite different from that of any of his contemporaries.  Unlike such artists as Winthrop Chandler and Rufus Hathaway, the effectiveness of whose compositions depended in large part on flat, unshaded linear design, Jennys' faces were strongly modeled with rose flesh tints contrasting with gray.  Almost a dozen of Jennys' pictures are signed, and therefore the recognition and appraisal of his work has been considerably aided." 

Excerpted from Nina Fletcher Little, Paintings by New England Provincial Artists 1775-1800, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1976, pp. 128-136.