Julia Norton Hartshorne

Periodca. 1870 - 1890

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions23.5 × 10.75 in. (59.7 × 27.3 cm)

ClassificationsPortraits

Credit LineGift of Eleanor M. Trask, Great-Granddaughter of Julia N. Hartshorne, 1999

Object number1999.7

DescriptionShoulder length portrait of a female facing left, with black hair pulled to the back of her head and a braid crossing above her forehead. She is posed looking upward, and is depicted as naked above her chest. The background and lower edge foreground consists of mottled blue and gray fading to coral pink lower right.
Curatorial RemarksThe oil on canvas portrait of Julia Norton Hartshorne is based on a miniature portrait on ivory taken before her death. Two copies of the miniature were owned by descendants, one now the property of Monmouth County Historical Association (see Accession number 2018.10.1) and the other by the Monmouth County Park System. Two copies of the larger portrait also descended in the family. The second is now owned by the Park System as well.NotesJulia Norton was born in Buffalo, NY, on 19 November 1838, a daughter of Charles Norton and Julia A. Maltby. By 1861, she and three siblings had moved to San Francisco. In the spring of that year, Julia became engaged to Benjamin Minturn Hartshorne (1826 - 1900), a son of Robert Hartshorne and Mary Ann Minturn of Highlands, Monmouth County, NJ. They were married in San Francisco on 13 February 1862. The Hartshornes had three children. From May through November 1868, the family made an extended visit east, staying with Ben’s aging father at their ancestral estate called Portland, and also in hotels and with relatives in the New York area. Shortly after returning to San Francisco, Julia contracted a serious illness requiring extensive care by a physician from 4 December into the following February. Julia Norton Hartshorne died on 3 February 1869, at the tragically young age of thirty. In late 1878, Ben and the children returned permanently to New Jersey. Letters written in 1862 by Robert Hartshorne while on a visit to San Francisco captured some of Julia’s personality: "She is not beautiful but has a most expressive countenance and every varying emotion of her mind manifests itself in her face. She is as cheerful as a cricket, as playful as a kitten, and as graceful as your aunt Cornelia [Minturn], and throws herself into an arm chair with the speed of an electric shock, and be all right. She is tall and her form strikingly perfect." "She is as sharp as a meat axe, as quick as a steel trap, as lively as a cricket, and as lithe as the proboscis of an Elephant. Last night she, Mary, Ben and myself were in the dining room. Suddenly she made a spring and stood erect and unruffled on the dining table. I looked at her for a few minutes and then said 'so stands the statue that enchants the world' and off she went as quick as she came on without an angular movement or disturbance of the symmetry of her redundant skirts." "She is very striking in her appearance, impulsive and very animated. In dress she uses taste equal to the ladies of the Atlantic cities and she does not spare 'barbarie gold and pearl,' 'purple and fair linen,' but that is the custom of the place."

Collections

Portraits

ProvenanceBenjamin M. Hartshorne (1826 - 1900); to his daughter Julia Hartshorne Trask (1863 - 1955); to her son Benjamin H. Trask (1889 - 1979); to his daughter Eleanor M. Trask (1926 - 2001), the donor.