Ellen Emmet Rand (1876-1941)
Oil on canvas, 1891
Gift of the Partnership for New York City, Inc.
NYSM 2003.41.39

Edwin D. Morgan was a farmer’s son from western Massachusetts who amassed considerable wealth in the wholesale grocery business, banking, and brokerage after he moved to New York City in 1836. By 1850 he had become active in politics, serving terms thereafter in the State Senate and the U. S. Senate. He was Commissioner of Immigration in the 1850s and was Governor of New York, 1859-1863, helping to raise 223,000 troops for the Union Army.

Ellen Gertrude “Bay” Emmet (Mrs. William Rand) was a member of an artistically talented and well-connected family. Several of her sisters and female cousins were artists as well. Her cousins also included novelist Henry James and playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood. Ellen Emmet was a teenager when she painted Morgan’s portrait posthumously from a photograph.