James B. Duke purchased this portrait of Jewish gem merchant Raphael Franco at auction in London in 1910. From 1912 to 1957, it hung in the library at the Duke house in New York. It hung there even after Doris Duke gifted the house to New York University in 1957, coming to Rough Point some time after 1970.
From 1912 to 1957, this grand portrait of Doris Duke’s mother, Nanaline Holt Inman Duke (1871?-1962), hung in the library of the Duke family’s residence in New York City at 1 East 78th Street. It was moved to Newport in the late 1950s when Doris Duke gave the New York house to New York University.
Nanaline was born in Macon, Georgia at a time of great change in American society in the years following the Civil War. She grew up in southern culture but spent most of her married life in the north, becoming part of the New York and later Newport social elite. Nanaline, like many other genteel women inthe period, married and had children. She hosted society events and philanthropic fundraisers in Newport and in New York City.
The portrait was made in 1907 around the time that Nanaline, the widow of wealthy Atlanta-based cotton merchant, William Inman, married tobacco and energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke.
This full-length portrait was among the original furnishings, paintings, and decorative arts purchased by James B. and Nanaline Duke for their home at 1 East 78th Street in New York City in October 1912.
Doris Duke sat for this portrait in 1923 in New York, the year that Rough Point was being renovated for the Duke Family by Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer. The artist, John Da Costa, had been commissioned around the same time to paint formal portraits of her father, the tobacco and energy tycoon James B. Duke, and grandfather, Washington Duke, after whom Duke University was renamed in the 1920s.
Doris Duke’s parents purchased this painting by English portrait artist John Hoppner in 1923 to add to their collection of other Hoppner portraits, also on display at Rough Point.
