Portrait of an NFA founder is unearthed, restored and unveiled

April 30, 2015 12:00 am • Last Updated: April 30, 2015 1:07 pm

By Kristina Dorsey
Features Editor

Before Norwich Free Academy's 2011 renovation — which included establishing new storage space for Slater Memorial Museum's art collection — the Slater stored its objects that weren't on display in less-than-high-tech environs. Like the attic.

A couple of years ago, when museum workers began shifting pieces out of the attic and into the new spot, they found something startling behind a shelving unit: a formidable portrait that measured 5 by 7 feet.

Its size suggested it was a painting of someone important, but who? And who created it? Slater folks began to delve into that mystery like museum-centric sleuths.

Among the clues: The building seen through a window on the canvas looked like a former NFA structure. The table next to the central figure resembled one in a different portrait at the Slater by artist Alexander Hamilton Emmons.

Over time, the truth revealed itself, after much Slater research and study: the portrait was of Russell Hubbard (1795-1857), one of NFA's founders and a Slater family relative. It was created by Emmons the year after Hubbard died under intriguing circumstances.

And on Friday, the Slater will unveil the painting at a public event at the museum. (The Slater didn't want the portrait made public before then, hence the lack of a photo here.)

When people see the painting on Friday, they'll be viewing a thoroughly restored work. Since it had been secreted in the attic, with no climate control, for possibly 100 years, the portrait was in poor condition. Not only that, but it was subject to a bad restoration effort that probably took place in the 1920s.

Slater Museum Director Vivian Zoe says, "The luckiest part was that the face was really intact. There was almost no loss. But all around the edge, where the original stretcher had been pressing, was completely abraded off."

It was really dirty, too — which might sound like an easy thing to address but was more complicated here. Dust became affixed to the varnished surface that had softened in the attic heat, requiring the use of a laboratory-grade detergent to clean the dust and dirt off.

To address those and myriad other issues, Slater hired a group of restorers, led by Joseph T. Matteis, along with Morgan Wilcox Beckwith, Peter Mecklemburg and Bibiana Moldranado. William Myers created a new, period-accurate gilded frame. Zoe declined to say what the restoration's cost was, but the project was supported by the NFA Foundation, the Friends of Slater Museum and Mary Lou Bargnesi and Fritz Gahagan.

All told, returning the portrait to its former glory took nearly two years.

It was very challenging work.

Matteis, who is based in Clinton, says, "In 1996, I removed nine layers of paint from a mural in Darien. Next to that, this was the second most difficult (project)."

Before that happened, though, the question to be answered was: who was the man in the portrait?

Zoe says she had a good idea that the person was important to NFA because of the former school building in the piece and that Emmons painted it. What followed was research into ancestry, on genealogy.com and in old newspapers.

"Some key words and names can produce amazing things," she says. "We discovered a little notice about a portrait — a life-sized portrait — and the claim that it was Emmons' largest and best to date."

Emmons (1816-1884) had quite a history, especially in portraits. He most notably was hired by Charles and William Johnson, founders of the Norwich Savings Bank, to paint "Norwich worthies" — the movers and shakers of the era — for display in the then-new Otis Library.

It turned out that the NFA trustees commissioned Emmons to paint a posthumous portrait of Hubbard to hang in the school's trustees' room. (Emmons was paid $25 each for his "worthies" paintings; it's uncertain what he earned for the Hubbard piece.)

Who exactly was Hubbard? He inherited the Norwich Courier but sold that newspaper business and bought a paper mill to run instead. That mill had been created by Christopher Leffingwell at the Falls Industrial complex.

Hubbard became the initial person to donate money toward the establishment of NFA (then called Free Academy). He was the first of 10 men that John Putnam Gulliver approached about the idea, and Hubbard gave $7,500 to the cause. Not only that, but Hubbard encouraged others to follow suit. And when it seemed that the NFA effort was foundering, he chipped in again, with $3,500. He acted as a clerk of the works for the first building, Old Main, which has since been torn down. He was the school's first board president.

Hubbard died before the first NFA class graduated. After church one day, he felt sick and sought out a powder from his cupboard to cure his ills. But he apparently grabbed the wrong one. That powder turned out to be corrosive sublimate — mercuric chloride, which has a poisonous quality, even as it was used in the Middle Ages to treat syphilis and to disinfect wounds. Hubbard died within hours of ingesting the powder.

"The community was devastated," Zoe says. "He was very well-liked, very well thought of. I think NFA would not have been possible without him."

So the portrait was created. By the 21st century, it needed major refurbishment. Matteis says each stage was difficult.

"Just to take it apart from the old restoration, get the previous backing boards off, took us 22 weeks and a lot of pain and aggravation. We didn't really get around to the front of the painting until we had already been in it for four or five months," he says.

About the boards: whoever did that earlier restoration, it is theorized, couldn't find a panel 60-inches wide for the backing and so overlapped four pieces of the equivalent of plywood together instead. Pages of 1924 New York Times were glued to that wood, possibly to cover the seams or to provide some strength.

In any case, Matteis says that the current efforts involved breaking the first layer of backing boards off, but the second layer was close to the fragile canvas. Consequently, they had to remove three or four square inches at a time by moistening it with a special solution and timing it with a stop watch — 20 minutes or so, until it was soft enough to scrape off.

Removing the varnish from that earlier restoration endeavor was among the tasks, too. The layers of varnish had turned dark, brown and gummy, Matteis says. It was difficult to see through. They used solvents to strip those layers.

The result has been a huge transformation, but Matteis says that's not something he necessarily notices as he's working on it.

"You don't see it happening along the way because it happens so gradually — we work on, like, a couple of square inches at a time. There are times when we'd only uncovered half (of the painting) where you'd really see the difference," he says. "When it's done, I really have to go back to the old photographs before I realize how far it's actually come. This one really came a long way."