Visitors to the Underhill Society Archives in Oyster Bay are welcome.
Visits are by appointment only.Prospective visitors are kindly asked to provide the Archivist with at least a week's notice so that their visit will be a meaningful one.
Call or text Steve at 516-996-0763
The painting depicted here was originally presented to our board of directors by N. Robert Underhill at the 2001 meeting of the Board of Directors in Oyster Bay, NY. Robert commissioned an artist at his expense to produce a representation of Captain John Underhill that he envisioned would show his true demeanor as a soldier with a commanding nature. As such, Robert requested that the painting's nameplate should read as below:
THE FIRST MUSTER — An artist’s depiction of Captain John Underhill calling the first muster of the Militia on the Commons at Salem, MA on December 13, 1636. This was after it was found that the previous painting of the Captain was actually identified as Anthony Van Dyck's portrait of Viscount Stafford, now in the Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Robert and the artist write the following explanation for the News and Views of the Underhill Society, volume 34, issue 1, Spring 2001:
How the Alleged Portrait of the Captain Was Found to be a Fraud:
By Harry Macy, Jr.
“Background. A painting (shown here) purporting to be that of Capt. John Underhill was purchased by Myron C. Taylor from an art dealer in Italy sometime in the early 1930s. Copies of the painting have been used in publications of our Society.
Then in the 1970s, an Underhill descendant spotted a full-color copy of the portrait in the gift department of a Miami department store. A note on the back of the copy identified it as Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait of the Viscount of Stafford, now in the Museum of Art of São Paulo, Brazil. I obtained a full-color copy of the portrait at São Paulo and saw that it matched the painting purchased by Taylor (that copy is now in the Society's archives).
Viscount of Stafford was William Howard (1614-1680), son of the Earl of Arundel, and there is a history of the Howard family which contains a black and white print of the same portrait. The artist, Van Dyck, was a court painter to King Charles II in the 1630s. The painting that Taylor acquired had the name “John Underhill of Warwickshire” in the upper right-hand corner, which is not on the São Paulo painting. On the back of Taylor's painting was a handwritten note stating that this John was “the son of Thomas of Barton on the Heath and brother of Sir Edward Underhill of Eatington.” We know that is absolutely incorrect, thanks to research on the English Underhills commissioned by Mr. Taylor himself, but the same erroneous statement appeared in a 19th-century edition of the British Dictionary of National Biography and was obviously copied from there.
The handwritten note also briefly described John Underhill’s New England career and his death in 1672, and beneath it was a label saying “Relined and Restored October 1866,” signed Martin Colnaghi. All these additions to the painting appear to have been created in the 1920s by the art dealer, to convince Mr. Taylor that the portrait was genuine. At Taylor’s death, the portrait was given to the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA, now called Preservation Long Island), and when the paint was tested for its age it proved to be from the 19th century, not the 17th. In all probability, the painting that Taylor purchased was a copy made by an art student as part of his or her education, and it was a very good copy at that. Colnaghi sold Taylor several other portraits which were supposed to be likenesses of the Captain’s parents and grandparents. They were also given to SPLIA and proved to be painted in the 19th century.
The vast majority of English people in the 17th century did not have their portraits painted and Capt. John Underhill was no exception.
Harry Macy, Jr.
Benjamin Townsend Underhill & daughter Mary
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