Z 2096.000 Hammett (Elizabeth Parrott Reynolds) Papers

Z 2096.000 S
HAMMETT (ELIZABETH PARROTT REYNOLDS) PAPERS

Elizabeth Parrott Reynolds was born in Tampa, Florida, on October 4, 1949. She received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Hollins College in Virginia in 1971. Reynolds became a curatorial assistant at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. She began working as an architectural historian at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson in October of 1973.

While working for the department, Reynolds made a number of color slides of portraits of Thomas Cantwell Healy for a friend at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum of American Folk Art in Williamsburg, Virginia. Afterwards, Reynolds began research that continued for approximately six years, concluding with her thesis entitled "Beginning to Live Upon Canvas: A Catalogue of the Known Works of Thomas Cantwell Healy." After completing her thesis, Reynolds received a master of arts degree in history from the Cooperstown graduate program of the State University of New York at Oneonta. She later mounted an exhibit of twenty-nine of Healys portraits at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson in 1980. Reynolds also published a catalogue of the exhibit entitled "To Live Upon Canvas: The Portrait Art of Thomas Cantwell Healy" in 1980. The exhibit was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and it ran from April 15 to June 18, 1980. Reynolds was a curator at the Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia, at the time of the exhibit.

Elizabeth Parrott Reynolds later married Tom Hammett, and they had two daughters, including Laura Margaret Hammett, who was born on August 24, 1987. The Hammetts lived in Nepal for a time, and they were living in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 2001.

Thomas Cantwell Healy was born in Albany, New York, on December 7, 1820. He was the fifth child of William and Mary Hicks Healy. After moving with his family to Boston, his mothers native city, in 1824, Thomas Cantwell Healy exhibited some early artwork at the Boston Athenaeum, and he also exhibited paintings at the New York National Academy of Design. He traveled to Paris, France, in 1838 to study painting with his elder brother, George Peter Alexander Healy. Although Thomas Cantwell Healy studied sculpture in Paris, he focused on portraiture. Healy returned to America the next year to settle in Lowell, Massachusetts, the home of another brother, John Reynolds Healy. He continued working on portraits in the Lowell area before he began painting in Louisiana and Mississippi, principally in New Orleans and Jackson, in 1843. Healy was painting in Claiborne County, Mississippi, by 1852. Many of the subjects of Healys portraits were also from Claiborne County. He also periodically traveled to such cities as Chicago, Illinois, and St. Paul, Minnesota, in order to work on other portraits.

On May 30, 1870, Thomas Cantwell Healy married Charlotte Roberts, the daughter of John and Mahala Jones Roberts of Claiborne County, Mississippi. The Healys had several children: George William (b. 1871), Thomas Burke (b. 1873), Mary Louisa Agnes (b. 1874), Maria Angela (b. 1875), and John Robert (b. 1877). By 1875, the Healys were permanently living at Lucknow, a plantation owned by George Peter Alexander Healy, which was located on Bayou Pierre, north of Port Gibson. This plantation was once owned by Mississippi governor Benjamin Grubb Humphreys.

Charlotte Roberts Healy, Maria Angela Healy, and Thomas Burke Healy all died in a yellow fever epidemic that ravaged the Port Gibson area in 1878. Thomas Cantwell Healy continued to live at Lucknow until his death on December 10, 1889. He was buried in the Catholic cemetery at Port Gibson.

This collection consists of correspondence; photographs; negatives; slides; research materials; a masters thesis; and a 1980 Mississippi Museum of Art exhibit catalogue resulting from Elizabeth Parrott Reynoldss research on the portraiture of nineteenth-century artist Thomas Cantwell Healy.

Two folders of correspondence are related to Reynoldss thesis and museum exhibit. The rest of the folders are in alphabetical order by the last name of the portrait owner. Reynolds directed the majority of her correspondence to the owners of Healys portraits, either to obtain permission to use photocopies of the portraits in her thesis or to obtain the portraits on loan for the museum exhibit.

Almost all of the photographs are of subjects of Healys portraits, but there are a few photographs of portraits by other artists. Most of the photographs are identified, and they are typically black-and-white, with a few that are in color. Reynolds assigned each identified portrait to a separate folder, and they are arranged alphabetically by the subjects last name. Some of these photographs may have been used in the exhibit catalogue.

Although one folder of unidentified negatives may depict various Healy portraits, the rest of the folders of negatives are matched to the identified subjects of Healys portraits. There are also several contact prints of the negatives of the portraits.

The slides of Healys portraits are mainly in color, and most of them are identified. There are also a few slides of portraits by other artists. Accompanying the slides is a folder of printed materials, including an index to the slides and a small amount of research material for some of the biographies that Reynolds wrote on the subjects of the portraits.

The research materials for Reynoldss thesis and related museum exhibit include original items, photocopies of original items, and notes. There is also a biography entitled G. P. A. Healy: American Artist, which was published by Marie De Mare in 1954. Among the research materials are several folders containing photocopies of published sources such as Goodspeeds Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi and Dunbar Rowlands Mississippi. Reynolds labeled most of the folders containing her research with descriptions of their contents. Also included is a photocopy of the journal of Stephen H. Johnson, the subject of one of Healys portraits and the source of the quotation that Reynolds paraphrased in the title of her thesis. Most of Reynoldss research notes are handwritten. There are also a number of index cards with compiled biographical information on the subjects of Healys portraits.

There is one undated, bound typescript of Reynoldss thesis entitled "Beginning to Live Upon Canvas: A Catalogue of the Known Works of Thomas Cantwell Healy." There are also three unbound copies of Reynoldss exhibit catalogue entitled To Live Upon Canvas: The Portrait Art of Thomas Cantwell Healy. Two are annotated, early versions, and one is the published version. Included is a color transparency of the front cover of the exhibit catalogue.

There are two 1976 maps of Claiborne County and one undated, annotated map of New Orleans.

1. Photographs. n.d.

Box 1, folders 1-64.

2. Negatives. n.d.

Box 1, folders 65-82.

3. Slides. n.d.

Box 2.

4. Thesis ("Beginning to Live Upon Canvas: A Catalogue of the Known Works of Thomas Cantwell Healy"). 1978; n.d.

Box 3, folders 3-4 (thesis typescripts), n.d.
Box 4: (bound thesis), 1978.

5. Exhibit Catalogue (To Live Upon Canvas: The Portrait Art of Thomas Cantwell Healy), n.d.

Box 3, folders 1-2.

6. Correspondence. 1971-1984; n.d.

Box 1, folders 83-145.

7. Research Materials. 1954; 1975-1980; n.d.

Box 1, folders 146161 (miscellaneous research materials), 1975-1977; n.d.
Box 4, G. P. A. Healy: American Artist, 1954.
Box 5, folder 1 (annotated research materials), n.d.
folder 2 (Healy exhibit), 1980; n.d.
folder 3 (notes already taken), n.d.
folder 4 (miscellaneous research notes and photocopies), n.d.
Box 6 (biographical index cards), n.d.

8. Maps. 1976; n.d.

Box 7, folder 1.