3085:: Paintings =PAIR= Oil on Paper Ovals Housed in Giltwood and Gesso Frames by Culpeper Virginia artist J.J. Porter, a Mosby Ranger at Night

SKU-3085::
PAIR of Original Oval Paintings, Oil-on-Paper, by Culpeper Virginia artist J.J. Porter. Artist by Day, Commando by Night.

Matched pair of oil-on-paper paintings signed J.J.Porter, American, ca.1860’s, oval, glazed, verso sealed, original giltwood and gesso frames, summer landscapes, depicts Southern imagery that includes enslaved African-Americans with a team of oxen pulling a freight wagon in one picture and in the other picture a planter allows his white draft horse to water in mid-stream.

About 2 lbs (962g) before packaging. Sight dimensions (both): 5.25″H x 7″W. Frame: 9.5″H 11.75″W. Condition (both): Very Good / consistent with age.

“John James Porter (American: 1825-1888) was an artist first, and then when The War Between the States broke out in April 1861, he became a Confederate commando second. He rode with the famous / infamous Col. John Mosby. Porter was one of Mosby’s Rangers. Mosby was the equivalent of a Confederate rock star, who terrorized yanks bivouacked all over Northern Virginia. Before the hostilities, Porter attended the University of Pennsylvania, but quit early and ran off to Europe where he studied classical painting. Upon his return he opened an artist studio in New York City in 1850. That was not successful so he moved to Virginia and became well-known as an itinerant portrait painter. A couple of his portraits hang in the Culpeper Courthouse and he painted the portrait of Robert E. Lee that presently hangs in the library at Virginia Tech. Porter’s first wife was also an artist and the daughter of a famous Revolutionary War hero, Colonel John Jameson, who was responsible for exposing the plot of Benedict Arnold which led to the traitor’s capture. She died shortly after their marriage and then Porter married his second wife, Caroline Brown, in 1860. Brown was a descendant of early Jamestown settlers who moved to Culpeper county in 1749. The two hastily built a two story wood frame home on the Brown family farm shortly before the Civil War commenced. Porter had just begun painting again about this time in a barn behind his house. Yet as much as he liked to paint, he could not resist the temptation to join Mosby’s Rangers. So, by day he was a docile portrait painter, but by night he was a valiant warrior who raided behind (Union) enemy lines to steal supplies and horses for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.” (AskArt Bio by Mark Clay Grove)