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Emma Catherine Embury: Journalism and Media\Journalist
Emma Catherine Embury: Society and Social Change\Socialite
Portrait
Place
United States\New York\Kings\New York\Manhattan Island
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Richard B. Neff, Jr. in honor of Joan Russell Neff and James Townsend Russell, Jr.
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.2016.23
Exhibition Label
Born New York City
Emma Catherine Embury gained great popularity as the author of more than four hundred stories, poems, and essays that emphasized moral lessons and the virtues of domesticity. Her daughter, Anne K. Sheldon, noted that Embury’s “impassioned earnestness, her scorn of injustice, [and] her quick sympathy with the oppressed, found expression in her poems, and [runs] like an electric thread throughout them.” Despite her literary career and support for female education, Embury believed women were best suited as wives and mothers and strongly opposed the contemporary women’s rights movement.
In the early 1830s, Henry Inman painted Embury and her husband, Daniel, a successful New York banker. Her portrait prompted Edgar Allan Poe to comment on Inman’s ability to capture Emma’s “intellectual and expressive” nature. Decades later, Jacob Hart Lazarus completed this copy of the original portrait for the Embury family. The direct gaze and confident pose bear out Poe’s assessment.
Nacida en la Ciudad de Nueva York
Emma Catherine Embury alcanzó gran popularidad con más de 400 cuentos, poemas y ensayos que enfatizaban lecciones morales y las virtudes de la domesticidad. Su hija, Anne K. Sheldon, señaló que “su efusiva sinceridad, su repudio de la injusticia y su inmediata empatía con los oprimidos encontraron expresión en sus poemas, y [fluyen] por ellos como una carga eléctrica”. A pesar de su carrera literaria y su apoyo a la educación femenina, Embury creía que las mujeres debían ser ante todo esposas y madres, y se opuso firmemente al movimiento feminista de su tiempo.
A principios de la década de 1830, Henry Inman pintó a Embury y a su esposo Daniel, exitoso banquero de Nueva York. Edgar Allan Poe comentó que Inman había logrado captar el carácter “intelectual y expresivo” de Emma. Décadas más tarde, Jacob Hart Lazarus completó esta copia del retrato original para la familia de Embury. La mirada directa y la pose confiada respaldan el juicio de Poe.
Provenance
The artist; Daniel Embury; by family descent to Mrs. Richard Embury Neff
