Daniel Huntington (1816-1906)
Oil on canvas, 1896
Gift of the Partnership for New York City, Inc.
NYSM 2003.41.35

Jones entered the Atlantic Insurance Company of New-York at age 15 and worked his way up through various positions. In 1855 he became president of the company and remained in that capacity until his death forty years later. In this portrait d’apparat he sits amid objects associated with his occupation. Behind him the globe prominently displays North America and the Atlantic Ocean, and his left hand supports a bound volume turned to a page headed “Wreck and Salvage.”

Huntington’s portrait of Jones is a posthumous replica, or exact copy, of an earlier Huntington portrait of Jones retained by the family or elsewhere. Replication was an accepted practice in portraiture. Huntington is notable for his many portrait commissions among the elite.