Workers carefully unload a historic portrait of Union's longtime president, Eliphalet Nott, which was restored at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. The portrait will return to its space in the building that bears Nott's name.
Eliphalet Nott has never looked better.
A stately portrait of Union’s longtime president is back in the historic building that bears his name after a much-needed refresh at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.
Painted by the renowned artist Henry Inman and completed in 1844, the massive 8-foot-by-5-foot portrait that weighs nearly 100 pounds deteriorated over time. The last full restoration of the painting was done more than 40 years ago, in 1981.
“The uneven quality of the varnish and haze of the surface layer of the painting have been completely restored, giving the painting a richness that had been missing for some time,” said Sarah Mottalini, collections manager/registrar of Union’s Permanent Collection. “The entire painting was revarnished to protect it from future deterioration and UV damage, which enhances the vibrance and saturation of the colors.”
Workers carefully prepare to return a historic portrait of Eliphalet Nott, Union's longtime president, to its pictorial space at the back of the Nott Memorial. The painting had been removed in March 2022 to be restored at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.
The frame also received significant reconstruction of missing or broken ornamental elements, and the surface was cleaned of decades of accumulated dust and grime, Mottalini said.
The result is a painting that is more striking than ever in its pictorial space at the back of the Nott Memorial.
A crew meticulously removed the oil on canvas portrait in March 2022 and transported it 50 miles to the conservation center, on the campus of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, an internationally noted art museum and research institution.
Painstaking conservation work on the portrait was completed in November 2022, while work on the frame was finished the following May. Since then, the portrait has been kept safely in storage in Williamstown while various projects were completed inside the Nott.
On Thursday morning, workers carefully unloaded the portrait from a specially constructed crate and installed it on the wall where it has hung since 1995.
A stately portrait of Eliphalet Nott, Union’s longtime president, is back in the historic building that bears his name after a much-needed refresh at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. Painted by the renowned artist Henry Inman and completed in 1844, the massive 8-foot-by-5-foot portrait weighs nearly 100 pounds. The last full restoration of the painting was done more than 40 years ago, in 1981.
“It is very nice to have the portrait back and looking beautiful after such a long time being away,” said College Librarian Frances Maloy.
Nott was Union’s president for 62 years, the longest tenure of any American college president. Commissioned from the artist in 1839 for $1,000 by alumni, the portrait depicts Nott in academic robes standing by a window with a view of the historic campus.
Alumni raised only $300 toward the bill, however, and when Inman died in 1846, Nott himself paid the balance of the bill to the artist’s destitute widow and children.
The restoration revealed some previously unseen details, including a Latin quotation that Tommaso Gazzarri, associate professor of classics, said translates to “Nature puts (it) in your hands and science makes usable.”
Originally hung in Old Chapel, the painting was relocated to the Nott Memorial in 1904. It briefly returned to Old Chapel and then moved back to the Nott for several decades before ending up in the first floor reading room of Schaffer Library in 1983. It came home to the Nott in 1995 following the landmark’s extensive multi-million dollar restoration completed in time for the College’s bicentennial.
It also has traveled across the country for special exhibits, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Nott portrait is not the only Inman work owned by the College. A painting of George Washington Doane, Class of 1818, hangs in the President’s House. Doane was an accomplished hymnologist who wrote hymns popular in his day and also became the Episcopalian Bishop of New Jersey