Folk
JOHN BRADLEY (1801–circa 1847)
Portrait of Mr. Abraham Cole Totten, 1834
Oil on canvas, 33 x 27 in.
Signed, dated, and inscribed (at lower right): I. Bradley Delin, / 1834; (on sheet of paper, at lower left): A. C. Totten / 1834; (on the back): Abraham Cole Totten / Aged 30 Years 1834. / Drawn by I. Bradley / From Great Britton.
Painted in 1834
RECORDED: Mary Childs Black and Stuart P. Feld, “Drawn by I. Bradley from Great Britton,” The National Gallery of Canada Bulletin 4 (August 1966), pp. 2, 4, 6 figs. 9 and 9a illus. // Mary Childs Black and Stuart P. Feld, “Drawn by I. Bradley From Great Britton,” The Magazine Antiques 90 (October 1966), pp. 504, 505 fig 10 illus., 507 // Rosemary Fitzgerald, “Artist John Bradley and the Totten Portraits,” Staten Island Historian 31 (January–March 1971), pp. 42–43 // Beatrix T. Rumford, ed., American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1981), p. 62 n. 4 // Arthur Kern and Sybil Kern, “On Some Little-Known Miniature Portraits by Well-Known American Folk Painters,” Folk Art 20 (Spring 1995), p. 51 // M. [Milton] C. Trexler, “Update on John Bradley, New York City Nineteenth-Century Folk Painter,” February 25, 2006, p. 6, http://www.hihosarah.com/bradley.htm Milton Trexler, “John Bradley, Folk Artist, Update,” October 21, 2011, p. 6
EXHIBITED: Museum of American Folk Art, New York, October 31–December 10, 1967, Folk Artists in the City: Paintings and Carvings Done by Artists in the Greater New York Area
EX COLL.: [Yonderhill Dwellers, Palisades, New York, until mid-1960s]; to private collection, and by descent, until 2025
When portraying adults, Bradley adhered to bust-length and half-length formats, as evident in this striking pair of husband-and-wife portraits from 1834, which feature Staten Islanders Abraham Cole Totten and his wife Mary Ann Brackett Totten––members of the family for which the neighborhood of Tottenville was named. A predominantly rural area where the principal industries revolved around oyster fishing, ship building, and farming, Tottenville is located at the southwestern tip of Staten Island about thirty-three miles from Manhattan. (The village was known as Bentley Manor until being renamed Tottenville in 1869. For the Totten family, who are of Welsh extraction, see Richard M. Bayles, ed., History of Richmond County, Staten Island, New York, From its Discovery to the Present Time [New York: L. E. Preston & Co., 1887], pp. 583–84.)
The first member of the Totten clan to settle on Staten Island was John Totten (d. 1785), a weaver who purchased property on Prince’s Bay in 1767. His son Gilbert (circa 1740–1819) later acquired four parcels of land in what would ultimately become Tottenville. Gilbert and his wife, Mary, went on to have eight children, among them John Totten (1771–1846) a well-to-do landowner and the so-called “Squire” of Tottenville who with his wife Ann Cole “Nancy” Totten (1773–1840) had twelve offspring. Aware of the presence of a talented artist in their midst, the Totten family sought Bradley out: in 1834, he painted portraits of John and Ann (both works are in the collection of the Staten Island Historical Society) and their son John Totten, the younger (location unknown), as well as the Hirschl & Adler portraits, which feature their other son Abraham, and their daughter-in-law Mary. With the exception of John, the younger’s portrait, Bradley signed and dated each of the Totten portraits on the front, in addition to inscribing the names and ages of his sitters on the verso. He also indicated his nationality by including an additional signature on the back stating “Drawn by I. Bradley / From Great Britton.”
Born on January 4, 1804, Abraham Cole Totten has been described as a “mariner” who made regular trips to the South. (See Landmarks Preservation Commission, “The Rutan-Journeay House,” March 24, 2009.) On February 3, 1830, he married Mary Ann Brackett in the Woodrow Church, the oldest Methodist Episcopal Church on Staten Island (organized in 1787), which was built with funds provided by parishioners such as the Totten family. Mary Ann was born on September 14, 1812, the daughter of William H. Brackett and his wife, Hannah. Census reports and city directory listings indicate that by 1855, the couple had moved to Manhattan and then later to Jersey City. Their nine children included William Henry Brackett Totten (1831–1914), who later served as president of the Irving Savings Institute in New York, where he established the “Totten Trust” (also known as the “poor man’s Will”).
