Artist/Maker Jacob Hart Lazarus (American, 1822 – 1891)

Mrs. Alfred Tobias (Hermione Hendricks, 1825–1891)

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 30 1/4 × 24 3/4 in. (76.8 × 62.9 cm)
Framed: 40 1/2 in. × 35 1/2 in. × 4 in. (102.9 × 90.2 × 10.2 cm)
Sight: 29 × 24 in. (73.7 × 61 cm)

Gift of Harmon H. Goldstone

2001.175

Like many women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who lived quiet lives with their families, Hermione Hendricks left no diary, letters or other records by which we might know her today. Our best information about Hermione comes from this portrait, probably painted around the time of her marriage to Alfred Tobias in 1847. Because of her husband's active affiliation with Congregation Shearith Israel, America's first Jewish congregation, we can surmise that much of her family life centered around New York City's oldest Jewish community, whose earliest members arrived in 1654, after fleeing their former home in Recife, Brazil.

ClassificationsPAINTINGS