JORDAN, SAMUEL
(c. 1803–after 1831)
is the painter of four known portraits and one memorial, all in oil on canvas and signed and dated 1831. Jordan’s signature on the memorial, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., identifies his residence as Boston and his age as 27. The only other documentation on Jordan is in the diary of Isaac Watts Merrill of Plaistow, New Hampshire, which cites the artist as painting portraits at a local farm in early 1831. Jordan’s known portraits are all half-length and show faces strongly modeled, in brown and gray, with cupid-bowmouths, foreshortened arms, and short, stubby fingers. Two of the known likenesses are double portraits of a husband and wife, in the collection of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.
See also
New York State Historical Association;
Painting, American Folk
.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chotner, Deborah, et al.
American Naive Paintings.
Washington, D.C., 1992.D’Ambrosio, Paul S., and Charlotte Emans.
Folk Art’s Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association.
Cooperstown, N.Y., 1987.Rumford, Beatrix T., ed.
American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center.
Boston, Mass., 1981.