Lot 1
19th C. Portrait Painting of Selina Blair Wheat Patten
19th C. Portrait Painting of Selina Blair Wheat Patten
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Anonymous (American, active XIX century). "Portrait of Selena Patten Wheat (1805-1896)" oil on canvas, ca. mid-19th century CE. Unsigned. A poised and thoughtful portrait presents Selina Blair Wheat (nee Patten), also known as Selina Patten Wheat and occasionally recorded as Selena Wheat, seated before a softly rendered interior, her calm expression and steady gaze conveying quiet intelligence and composure. She wears a dark dress with a white lace collar, the deep folds of the garment skillfully modeled to contrast with the warm tones of her face and the restrained background. In her hand she holds a sheet of paper and a pen, suggesting literacy, correspondence, or intellectual engagement, qualities befitting the wife of a prominent clergyman and educator. The artist remains unidentified, yet the careful handling of light, the refined features, and the balanced composition place the work firmly within the tradition of mid-19th century American portraiture. Behind Selina Wheat, a tall arched window with diamond-patterned leaded glass opens to a landscape beyond. Through the panes appears a distant structure with a castellated roofline and slender turrets, recalling the romanticized Gothic architecture popular in the mid-19th century. The building may represent a chapel or prominent institutional structure connected to one of the Southern communities in which the Wheat family lived. Given her husband's long career in Episcopal ministry and education, it is possible the distant building alludes to a church or university setting in places such as Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, or Memphis - cities closely tied to the family's life and work. Though the structure remains unidentified, its presence adds both symbolic and geographic context to the portrait. Size of painting: 28" W x 36" H (71.1 cm x 91.4 cm); of frame: 34" W x 42" H (86.4 cm x 106.7 cm)
Selina Blair Patten was born in 1805, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Roberdeau Patten and the granddaughter of General Daniel Roberdeau of Philadelphia, a wealthy merchant and officer in the Pennsylvania troops during the American Revolution. In 1825 she married the Reverend John Thomas Wheat, whom she met while he was studying for the Episcopal ministry at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Their marriage began a partnership that would carry the family across much of the American South and Midwest as Wheat served a succession of parishes and academic posts.
The couple raised eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Their eldest son, Roberdeau Chatham Wheat, became a soldier of fortune and died during the Civil War, as did another son, John Thomas Wheat, Jr. Their youngest son, Leonidas Polk Wheat, named for the Episcopal bishop who later became Confederate General Leonidas Polk, studied piano in Paris under Franz Liszt and pursued a career as a concert pianist. Their daughters formed notable connections as well: Selina Patten Wheat married Dr. John Seay of Nashville, Tennessee, and Josephine May Wheat married Francis E. Shober.
Throughout her husband's long ministry Selina Wheat played an important and compassionate role in the communities where the family lived. When the Reverend Wheat accepted a professorship in Rhetoric and Logic at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1849, contemporary accounts noted that the Wheat family contributed greatly to the social life of the village. Mrs. Wheat in particular was remembered for her care of ill students, frequently nursing them in times of sickness. Demonstrating remarkable generosity, she even offered a corner of her own property as a site for a university infirmary. The trustees accepted the offer, and in 1858 a small cottage known as "The Retreat" was constructed there to house recovering students.
Selina Wheat lived through decades of profound personal and national upheaval, including the loss of two sons during the Civil War and the frequent relocations required by her husband's clerical and academic career. After his retirement in 1873 the family settled in Salisbury, North Carolina, where she spent her later years among children and grandchildren. She survived her husband by several years and died on Christmas Eve in 1896.
This portrait captures Selina Blair Wheat not only as the wife of a prominent Episcopal clergyman but as a woman of education, resilience, and generosity whose life was deeply woven into the religious and academic communities of the 19th-century American South. The distant Gothic structure visible beyond the window subtly anchors the sitter within the world of churches and institutions that shaped both her husband's vocation and her own legacy of care and service.
Provenance: private Boulder, CO, USA collection
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Item #
201293
- Condition: Fair. Mounted in custom frame with backing board on verso; verso of painting has not been examined. Age-expected wear to canvas with craquelure to paint and some areas of retouching. A few nicks to frame, but, otherwise both painting and frame are in very good condition. Suspension hook on verso for display.
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