Pair of Oil on canvas portraits, Col. James Wemyss and Annie Hatch Wemyss, circa 1920. Col. Wemyss's portrait is signed lower right by the artist Sarah E. Cowan (Sarah Eakin Cowan, Hendersonville, TN, 1873-1958). In antique giltwood and composition frames (Mrs. Wemyss' has oval opening). Both 24" x 20" sight, 32" x 28 and 34-1/2" x 30" framed. Provenance: The estate of Margaret Wemyss Connor, Nashville, Tennessee. Note: Colonel James Wemyss was a cotton broker in Mobile, Alabama until the Civil War. He was wounded while serving as captain of a Confederate equestrian regiment and later, frustrated by carpetbaggers in the Reconstruction-era South, he moved his family to the Gallatin area of Tennessee. The family home was known as Maple Shade. Wemyss' first wife was Fannie Hatch, whose portrait is being sold as a separate lot in this auction. After Fannie died of diptheria, Wemyss married her younger sister, Annie. Their granddaughter was Mrs. Margaret Wemyss Connor. These portraits were painted posthumously, probably from photographs. Portraitist Sarah Eakin Cowan studied at the Art Students League in New York City, Chase School of Art, and at Teacher's College with Arthur Wesley Dow. She also took lessons at the Academie Julian with Marie La Forge. She exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the 1939 World's Fair. She is best known for her miniature portraits, one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Source: Carrie Barratt and Lorrie Zabar, "American Portrait Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art").

Paintings have been poorly restored with significant overpainting.