Collection
/
American Art

David Leavitt

Samuel Lovett Waldo

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

These portraits were painted around the time that the sitters moved from New York to Brooklyn, where David Leavitt had an interest in the Brooklyn White Lead Company (later Dutch Boy Paint). One of his partners in this enterprise was the Brooklyn Museum’s founder, Augustus Graham. In this work, David Leavitt looks up from his newspaper, which signals involvement as a citizen in the larger world of business and politics.

Maria Leavitt, fashionably dressed and coiffed, is seated in a Neoclassical armchair before an open window. A generalized landscape view associates her with nature—a reference both to the sheltered lifestyle of a lady in society and to the heightened sensitivity then attributed to the female gender.

Caption

Samuel Lovett Waldo (American, 1783–1861). David Leavitt, ca. 1820–1825. Oil on panel, 33 1/16 x 25 9/16 in. (83.9 x 65 cm) frame: 42 9/16 x 35 1/16 x 4 1/2 in. (108.1 x 89.1 x 11.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Anna S. Delafield, Fisher Howe, Lawrence Howe, and R. Warren Howe in memory of their brother, David Leavitt Howe (1915-1995), 1996.43.1. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Collection

American Art

Title

David Leavitt

Date

ca. 1820–1825

Medium

Oil on panel

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

33 1/16 x 25 9/16 in. (83.9 x 65 cm) frame: 42 9/16 x 35 1/16 x 4 1/2 in. (108.1 x 89.1 x 11.4 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of Anna S. Delafield, Fisher Howe, Lawrence Howe, and R. Warren Howe in memory of their brother, David Leavitt Howe (1915-1995)

Accession Number

1996.43.1

Frequent Art Questions

  • Brother and sister or husband and wife?

    This is the husband-and-wife duo of David and Maria Clarissa Leavitt, painted by Samuel Lovett Waldo. It is believed that these portraits were painted when David Leavitt opened a new business in Brooklyn, thus giving the couple some new income for commissioning a pair of portraits. The Leavitts were both born in Connecticut, and Mr. Leavitt's business enterprises brought them to Brooklyn. He was a financier and the president of Fulton Bank.

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Artists and makers

Samuel Lovett Waldo

5 works in the collection