A rare painting created nearly two centuries ago by one of Louisiana’s earliest portrait artists has found a permanent home at the Historic New Orleans Collection, bringing renewed attention to a possible connection between the artwork, Melrose Plantation and the Metoyer family of Natchitoches Parish. The painting, Creole Boy with a Moth, was completed in 1835 by Julien Hudson, Louisiana’s first native-born portraitist and the second-known portraitist of color in American history. Only six of Hudson’s works are known to survive.
The Historic New Orleans Collection recently acquired the painting and another Hudson portrait through a gift from the Robert and Martha Bolton Living Trust in memory of James D. (Don) Didier. Erin Greenwald, deputy director of the Historic New Orleans Collection, explained how researchers connected the painting to Natchitoches through historical photographs and archival records.
According to Greenwald, art historian William Rudolph identified a photograph of the painting in a 1925 scrapbook compiled by Louisiana writer Lyle Saxon while he was living at Melrose Plantation. The scrapbook is preserved at Northwestern State University’s Cammie G. Henry Research Center in Natchitoches. The photograph appears beneath a handwritten heading reading “Mulatto Portraits.” Another notation identifies the subject as “Dominic Metoyer, 1836.”…