by NRF User | Jan 3, 2024
This is portrait depicts an unknown woman. Although there has been some speculation as to her identity, it is likely that she was one of the models the 17th-century artist Ferdinand Bol regularly used in his work. Ferdinand Bol painted this woman in the mid-17th century—at the time that the Dutch Empire was at its height, thanks to a powerful naval forced and the control of maritime trade.
Doris Duke purchased it in (1971) and put it on display in the Great Hall—a room full of other objects representing her family’s success and reflecting her family’s taste in art. It is one of the first objects you encounter when you enter Rough Point and it hangs today right above a 17th-century curiosity cabinet—another object that points to sea exploration and European empire-building. The painting—and the cabinet—are a part of a much larger thread leading to American imperialism and how the Dukes saw themselves as heirs to an older European cultural and political legacy.
by NRF User | Jan 3, 2024
This is an example of a work commemorating grief and was part of the mourning process. It is painting on silk of two women in black outside a church with embroidered details.
by NRF User | Jan 3, 2024
This painting was a gift from Alletta Morris McBean to Doris Duke. It is one of the few American paintings in Doris’s collection and certainly reflects Leta’s taste more than Doris’s. (Leta’s home in Newport, Chepstow, displays many more examples of paintings from the 19th-century American Hudson School.) It also points to Doris’s affection for her friend and the value she placed on the gift.
by NRF User | Jan 3, 2024
Renoir’s painting of a young girl engaged in needlework is the preparatory study for a much larger and more finished portrait.
Doris Duke bought it in 1959 at auction from the collection of Thelma Chrysler Foy, another collector and social acquaintance.
by NRF User | Jan 3, 2024
This watercolor depicts renowned cabinetmaker John Goddard’s house in the Point neighborhood of Newport, RI. The composition includes two houses and dock scene with beach. Written in pencil script, bottom right corner: Old Newport houses, 1865. In bottom left corner, in pencil: S.C.
