| Notes |
- George Washington Conarroe's portraits of the West & Estell Families
By Kate Nearpass Ogden
From “Atlantic Heritage,” Vol. 9, Issue 1, Spring 2011
The portrait painter George Washington Conarroe (1802-1882) met his future wife, Charlotte Biddle West, when he was hired to paint members of the West and Estell families of Atlantic County. Then a resident of Salem, New Jersey, the artist was hired in the late 1820s to paint Charlotte's eldest brother, George Spencer West. The West family lived at the Catawba Plantation, an estate four miles south of Mays Landing, in what was then Gloucester County. Charlotte and George's father, known as George West, Jr., had been involved in overseas trade and owned extensive property in southern New Jersey.
According to the book Tall Pines at Catawba by Clark Barrett and Kenneth Scull (1968), the West family suffered a major tragedy in 1829 when George, his brother James, and both of their parents died of disease within a five-week period. The three surviving siblings – Charlotte (the oldest), Maria (the youngest), and their brother Joseph (second youngest) – all married within two years of this tragedy. Sudden acquisition of their inheritance may have played a role in their ability and willingness to marry.
Charlotte, then twenty-nine, was something of an old maid when she married the artist on February 23, 1831. Whether their union was a love match from the beginning or a marriage of convenience, it was likely made feasible by her inheritance, and the marriage was apparently a success. (The couple celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in Philadelphia in 1881, the year before the painter's death.) Charlotte is said to have brought a dowry of $10,000 to the marriage – an amount that made the painter's early career considerably easier than that of most beginning artists. The couple invested some of Charlotte's money in real estate, which brought them a useful second income over the years.
Charlotte's youngest sibling, Maria, married Daniel Estell, who was more than ten years her senior; his family also lived in what is now Atlantic County. Conarroe painted portraits of Maria and Daniel, probably around the time of their marriage in September 1831, seven months after his own wedding. Despite some anatomical awkwardness, Conarroe's portrait of Maria is one of his most beautiful early portraits of a young woman; it is unusual in showing her seated at a piano with sheet music in front of her. Conarroe's portrait of Maria's husband Daniel is one of the artist's best early portraits; it depicts a dashing young man with Byronic, disheveled hair. Daniel was a merchant and later the owner of a glass factory at what is now Estell Manor County Park. Conarroe also painted his wife's only surviving brother, Joseph English West, as well as Joseph's wife Hulda Stewart West and their first child, George Spencer West. The latter is an appealing portrait of mother and child despite some awkwardness in the child's pose.
In 1830 Conarroe moved to Philadelphia, where he brought his bride after their wedding and where he painted portraits professionally over a career spanning more than forty years. Charlotte's family suffered another blow in 1834, when her younger sister Maria died only three years after her wedding. The artist and his wife named their older daughter, who was born in 1835, for Maria. Years later, Conarroe was asked to paint Daniel Estell's second wife, Rebecca.
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