Wormeley Portraits

From Jonathan Poston, The Virginia Historical Society has the three big Wormeley portraits from the family of Betty Williams Gookin, who lives in Middleburg, and two smaller ones from the estate of a Wormeley family (the last is dead) who lived in Richmond. All are by Wollaston except Ralph V's Cambridge portrait by RE Pine. Three came from the Chauncy Williams family in Northern Virginia. Descended from Wormeley's youngest daughter, Sarah. The other two -- small Wollastons and a miniature of Warner Lewis Wormeley came from the "last Wormeleys" in Richmond as John Jennings used to say. The family that barely held on at Rosegill until the 1840s included a fellow names Thomas machen Boswell Roy and a descendant I met had daguerrotypes of them. The information below all came from the Virginia Historical Society website at www.vahistorical.org

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Ralph IV

IMAGES, WORMELEY, RALPH, IV, 1715-1790 ACCESSION NO.: IMG10690 NOW LOCATED: Object in storage, please make appointment to view SUBJECT/CLASS: Images Wormeley, Ralph, 1715-1790 -- Images DESCRIPTION: Images, Wormeley, Ralph, IV, 1715-1790   Jonathan Poston says he thinks this is a Wollaston painting, 3/4 length.

IMAGES, WORMELEY, JANE LOWE (BOWLES) B.CA.1726 WIFE OF RALPH WORMELEY IV ACCESSION NO.: IMG10685 NOW LOCATED: Object in storage, please make appointment to view SUBJECT/CLASS: Images Wormeley, Jane Lowe Bowles, b. ca. 1726 -- Images DESCRIPTION: Images, Wormeley, Jane Lowe (Bowles) b.ca.1726 Wife of Ralph Wormeley IV Jonathan Poston: 3/4 length portrait by Wollaston of Ralph V's mother

Ralph V

PAINTING, RALPH WORMELEY V ACCESSION NO.: 1958.30 NOW LOCATED: Object in storage, please make appointment to view ARTIST/MAKER(S): Wollaston, John (Artist) DATE: 1755 SUBJECT/CLASS: Painting Portraits Wormeley, Ralph, 1745-1806 -- Pictorial works Children -- Pictorial works DESCRIPTION: This charming portrait of the ten-year-old heir to the Wormeley family estate (Ralph Wormeley V) is one of the best of the children's portraits painted in colonial Virginia. Not only is the boy's elegant velvet jacket painted with John Wollaston's characteristic attention to the texture and detail of costumes, but young Wormeley also displays a mixture of adult formality and adolescent gracefulness that probably was characteristic of this sitter. He is not rigidly and inanimately posed in the manner of most colonial American children in portraiture. Oil on canvas Length: 68.58 cm (27 in) Width: 63.50 cm (25 in)

IMAGES, WORMELEY, RALPH, V, 1742-1804 ACCESSION NO.: IMG10691 NOW LOCATED: Object in storage, please make appointment to view SUBJECT/CLASS: Images Wormeley, Ralph, 1742-1804 -- Images DESCRIPTION: Images, Wormeley, Ralph, V, 1742-1804 See also: Izard, Ralph, 1742-1804   Jonathan Poston says he thinks this is the painting by Robert Edge Pine. He calls it "The Leaving Portrait"

"The Cricketers" by Benjamin West This is a group portrait that includes Ralph V. The Izard portrait, now at the Brook Club in NYC "The work of Benjamin West, the first American artist to achieve international renown, included at least one memorable evocation of colonial sports: The Cricketers (ca. 1763, oil on canvas, The Brook Club, New York). The five young sportsmen are the Virginia aristocrats James Allen, Andrew Allen, and Ralph Wormeley, and their equally aristocratic South Carolinian friends, Ralph Izard and Arthur Middleton. Posing proudly with their cricket bats (and Middleton's dog), they silenty proclaim their social and their ethnic status." -- from Artist and Athletes, Carol Clark and Allen Guttmann, Amherst College, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer 1995) Jonathan Poston will send a copy of this. A second painting of the same thing is in England, in private ownership, who has allowed it to be photographed.

Warner Lewis Wormely, Ralph V's son

IMAGES, WORMELEY, WARNER LEWIS, 1785-1814 ACCESSION NO.: IMG10694 NOW LOCATED: Object in storage, please make appointment to view SUBJECT/CLASS: Images Wormeley, Warner Lewis, 1785-1814 -- Images DESCRIPTION: Images, Wormeley, Warner Lewis, 1785-1814   Jonathan Poston says Warner Lewis Wormeley was Ralph V's son.

Portrait of Warner Lewis Wormeley by John Drinker is in the Museum of Southern Decorative Arts Museum in Winston-Salem. In the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Jonathan will send this.

Philip Grymes, who married Ralph V's daughter Judith

PAINTING, THE GRYMES CHILDREN ACCESSION NO.: 1893.3 NOW LOCATED: Object on display in The Story of Virginia ARTIST/MAKER(S): Hesselius, John (Artist) DATE: 1750 - 1751 SUBJECT/CLASS: Painting Portraits Grymes, Lucy, 1743-1830 -- Pictorial works Grymes, Philip, 1746-1805 -- Pictorial works Grymes, John Randolph, 1747-1796 -- Pictorial works Grymes, Charles, b. 1748 -- Pictorial works Children -- Pictorial works Boys -- Pictorial works Girls -- Pictorial works DESCRIPTION: Painting of the Grymes Children. The children depicted in this charming portrait are the four eldest children of Philip Grymes (1721-1762) and Mary (Randolph) Grymes of Brandon, Middlesex County. Philip Grymes, son of John and Lucy (Grymes, was a burgess, receiver general of the colony 1749-54, and a member of the colonial Council from 1751 until his death in 1762. His wife, whom he married on December 8, 1742, was a daughter of Sir John and Lady Randolph; she bore her husband ten children, four of whom are here depicted (left to right). 1. Lucy Grymes (1743-1830) married on July 29, 1762, Thomas Nelson (1738-1789), signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. 2. John Randolph Grymes (1747-1796), still in skirts at the time the portrait was painted, received his formal education in England, was a loyalist during the American Revoliution, and served under Simcoe in the Queen's Rangers. After living for a time in England, he returned to Virginia where he prospered as a planter in Orange County. On May 20, 1779, he married in London his first cousin Susannah Randolph, daughter of John Randolph, former attorney general of Virginia; the couple had four children. 3. Philip Ludwell Grymes (1746-1805), the eldest son, was educated in England, inherited Brandon on the death of his father, represented Middlesex County in the House of Burgesses 1769-70, and was sheriff of the county. He later became a member of the House of Delegates and the Council of State. He married, first, Elizabeth Randolph, daughter of William and Anne (Harrison) Randolph, and second, Judith Wormeley, daughter of Ralph Wormeley (1745-1806) and Eleanor (Tayloe) Wormeley of Rosegill, Middlesex County; he had children by his second wife. 4. Charles Grymes (b. 1748) of whom little is known. It was probably he who married in 1773 Ann Lightfoot of York County. Oil on canvas Length: 137.16 cm (54 in) Width: 165.10 cm (65 in)

Lord Dunmore

John Murray, The Earl of Dunmore Lord Dunmore, the last colonial governor of Virginia. Painting the the Scottish National Portrait Gallery http://www.natgalscot.ac.uk/

More

[Manuscript] Call Number Reference F222 V81 M68 H14 Title Ralph Wormeley : Biographical sketch In: Hall, Virginius Cornick. Portraits in the Collection of the Virginia Historical Society. A Catalogue. Charlottesville, VA. (1981), p.263 and 264 Subjects    Wormeley, Ralph, 1715-1790. Record no. 26886