Portrait of Betsy,
accession number 1985.212,
The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Historic New Orleans Collection owns several hundred paintings (including oils and watercolors) by Louisiana and Southern artists. Examples of these works encompass genres and subjects dealing with historical events in American History: slavery, the Civil War, the war of 1812 (specifically, the Battle of New Orleans) as well as Jazz, maritime commerce, the urban core of New Orleans, aspects of pluralistic ethnicity and gender relations, Louisiana’s deltaic landscape, and portraits both specific and emblematic.
Some of these images have become well known through use in text books and documentary film projects, but many have never been reproduced. Thanks to a significant bequest by art collector Laura Simon Nelson, The Collection possesses a substantial body of work by important Southern painters and sculptors, including many works by William and Ellsworth Woodward, the latter of whom founded a ground-breaking art program at Newcomb College in New Orleans in the early 20th century.
In all cases, the paintings held by The Collection have a pronounced historical interest, documenting persons, places and events in Louisiana and by implication, the Gulf South. As a whole, the painting collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection forms a visual narrative of the origins and development of art and society in Louisiana.