Hamilton Portrait

Sherry Lucas writes a column about a piece of art with a Belhaven connection in today's Clarion Ledger.

In the corridor of The Mississippi Story at the Mississippi Museum of Art, an 1884 portrait of James Stewart Hamilton Jr. has joined other works from the museum's permanent collection that evoke the state's people, history, land and life.

It's a five-foot portrait of a boy, intriguing as much for its period dress - a velvet smock with a lace collar, snug leather boots and riding crop - as for its details. An intent gaze counters rosy cheeks and a curling forelock.

The painting is attributed to James Thomas Poindexter (1832-1891), an itinerant painter who had a studio in Evansville, one in Kentucky and possibly one in Grenada for a while. He'd also apparently spent some time in New Orleans.

The boy is standing on what was then the family property. The family home, built by the boy's father, Col. James S. Hamilton, was named Belhaven in honor of his ancestral home in Scotland.

It's where Belhaven College sits today.

The Belhaven Lake in the background no longer exists. It was drained and filled in. And the mountain range behind the lake? That's a piece of artistic license.

What's not fabricated is that outfit. The museum has the actual smock and riding crop from the portrait, from the family, Piersol says. They've yet to figure out how to display those.

The rest of the story for young Hamilton is a sad one. He died at age 21 in a tragic train accident.

Just a couple of notes on it, though. Belhaven College today is not on the Hamilton property on Boyd Street. It moved from that land after the second Belhaven College fire in 1910, and the school reopened on its current property on Peachtree Street. Also, there is still a lake on the property at Belhaven College although it is much smaller (some of it has been drained) and I have no idea if it is the same water from the picture.