Hobbs and Henning Family Portraits
Henning and Hobb family miniature portraits, including mourning portrait of Susan Henning Hobbs (1816-1835) (top), first wife of Edward Dorsey Hobbs. Painted in grisaille manner to indicate her death around the age 19. The family miniatures were later framed together. Other miniatures include: Edward Dorsey Hobbs (left-center) (son of Mary Ann Hobbs), Mary Ann Dorsey Hobbs (center), Susan Hobbs Luckett (right-center)(daughter of Marry Ann Hobbs), and Fanny Henning Speed (bottom) (see also 1935.14).
Fanny was the daughter of James W. Henning (brother of Fanny Henning Speed) and Mildred E. Maupin (b. 1821), who died in 1850 of accidental poisoning, along with an infant she was nursing. Fanny died in October, 1866 around the age of 18 or 19 from Phthisis, also known as tuberculosis. A year after Fanny’s death, her father commissioned artist G.P.A Healy to paint several family portraits. Fanny’s portrait shows her as a child rather than a teenager. It is believed that the only known image of her was a daguerreotype taken when she was a child. The photograph only depicted her from the bust up. Her half-sister Lulie, born in 1860 to J.W Henning and his second wife Sarah Katherine Cowan Buck (1827-1919) wore Fanny’s dress and modeled for the artist.