A Portrait of: Anna Hausch Pfizer (Pfizer Corporation.) Oil on canvas. Signed, dated (1895) and inscribed upper left. 40 x 29 7/8 inches; 50 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches (overall) framed.

Description: There are many questions surrounding this Gilded Age portrait of Anna Hausch Pfizer, the wife of Charles Pfizer, founder of Pfizer the multinational biotechnology company.

The portrait had been offered publicly in 2015 but without the identification of the sitter, which we have identified, and possibly without the correct attribution for several reasons.

The signature and inscription, in the upper right corner uses the French d apres, traditionally indicating that it is a portrait after another. Presumably, then, it is a portrait after a portrait by Theobald Chartran (French, 1849 - 1907) whose signature appears below. However, in this case and for the reasons we outline, the inscripion d apres may have been used in another sense, "according to,” which could indicate the portrait was according to Chartran, or that Chartran worked off the portrait of another artist, presumably an artist with the monogram C.J.B. which is also part of the inscription.

Knoedler Gallery records (Getty Research Institute), Chartran's gallerist in the 1890s, record commissions for Chartran portraits of: William McKinley, Henry Frick, Andrew Carnegie and approximately 40 others; however, we could not locate a gallery commission for Anna Hausch Pfizer.

A portrait of Anna Hausch Pfizer, listed online at Immigrant Entreprenuership.org (Courtesy of Pfizer), bears a close resemblance to the portrait being offered and forms the basis for our identification of the sitter in the portrait as that of Anna Hausch Pfizer. What we can tell from reviewing the online image in the Pfizer repository is that the offered portrait is very close to that one in terms of the pose, expression, dress, corsage, necklace, earring, lace, hair part and many other details. Perhaps though, and in our opinion, Anna Pfizer is portrayed in the offered portrait in a more youthful manner (e.g., aging traits, physique, hair pigmentation, etc.) than in the cited Pfizer portrait.

Chartran did have a history of painting portraits for sitters that the sitters dismissed as not acceptable likenesses. The most famous example being his portrait of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. The portrait has been said to be so disliked by President Roosevelt that Roosevelt had it destroyed and a commission for a new portrait was then given to John Singer Sargent. Newspaper accounts similarly engage a debate about "good likeness" vs. "good picture" in regards to a Chartran portraits. The Hanford Journal, September 1907, notes an incident in which Chartran destroyed the portrait of a lady after her husband, at his wife's behest complained about the likeness, and Chartran was reported to have destroyed the painting in anger in front of the man.

Other possibilities about the offered portrait include that the Pfizer family had it done or re-done to hang in another location, for instance their summer residence, Linden Gate, Newport, Rhode Island.

We would also like to point out that the signature on the offered portrait does appear both in terms of formation, direction, and rise to be Chartran's; though, and also in our opinion, another talented painter could potentially paint, even in a series of fast strokes, the convincing signature of another artist.

As to the identity of C.J.B. (we are assuming the middle stroke to be a J), we could not locate another artist with the skill and reputation to have produced such a portrait. Therefore, we offer this portrait, circa 1895, to be of Anna Hausch Pfizer, circa 1895, but without further attribution. Old professional restoration. Nothing evident under blacklight. Canvas was relined. A few horizontal lines (largest approximately 6 inches) evident under raking light. (Please note, this is not a full condition report. Please email us at: info@Vallots.com for a detailed condition report or for additional photographs. Every lot is sold as-is.)