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Sale 68
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Lot 261
Cohen, Frederick Elmour (1858) British-American portrait, miniature, historical, and genre painter. An English Jew, he immigrated to Detroit from Canada during the rebellion of 1837, where he stayed until 1855. Autograph Letter Signed ("Frederick"), two pages, Detroit, October 22, 1846. To a friend, "Mrs. Capt. Montieth / Canandaigua, NY," with a brilliant watercolor portrait of himself and his wife on the blank leaf. In addition, he has drawn a pen and ink self-portrait at the bottom of the second page.
In the letter Cohen writes about his brother and that his sister "would certainly enjoy the society of my wife & her friends, for she is a person who is and ever has been strictly pious, and so are all her conexions [sic] in this city, of the highest respectability and everything I know would suit her…" In a later part of the letter he explains his ink portrait and discusses some other of his own life portraits while critiquing the attached painting: "…I send you a miniature of Myself & Wife. They are considered very good likenesses. My wife is taken from the original herself, and is as near as I could come to a perfect miniature. My own is taken from one in my studio as large as life which is often taken & spoken to as though it was the original. However, sufise [sic] it to say that any person you show this picture to will know both of us where ever they may meet us, if they have any kind of memory. That gown I wear is my working gown. I have a large hat to match it, but it gives me to wild a look to paint it so I have left that off although there are 3 portraits of me in Buffalo, one in Chicago & 2 in New York that have all got the hat on- they look like this [On the lower left hand corner of page two Cohen has drawn a picture of himself with a hat and the caption- I am a handsome child ain't I; poor boy, it is a great pity. I didn't use'd to be always so too]…."
Another Cohen self portrait is in the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts. An extraordinary illustrated letter by an important artist, which encompasses the areas of American, English, and Canadian Judaica, Art, and Michiganiana. Housed in a quarter mottled calf fitted box with a removable framed matte through which the painting may be viewed.
Estimated Value $3,000 - 5,000.
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| Realized $2,400 |
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