The painting, “Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt standing over an infant in the Charter Oak cradle” offers us a glimpse of Elizabeth as the attentive mother to her infant child. The infant is not identified and Elizabeth lost three children in their infancy; Sammy (Samuel), Hettie (Henrietta), Lizzie (Elizabeth). Her only surviving child into adulthood was her boy Caldwell.
The cradle, commissioned for the Colt’s firstborn child, Sammy, is suspended between posts that are adorned with “prancing colts.” (a stand-in for the family name.) It was sculpted from the trunk of Connecticut’s famous Charter Oak felled by a storm in 1856. Legend has it that Joseph Wadsworth, ancestor of the founder of the Wadsworth museum, Daniel, concealed Connecticut’s 1682 Royal Charter from a tyrannical English Governor General of New England in one of the oak’s cavities. The oak became a symbol of American independence. For the parents of the Colt children, the cradle embodied the spirit of American independence and informed the future role of their infant. On the base of the cradle is a poem by Lydia Sigourney, expressing in verse this sentiment. Some of the lines read:
…your cradle is made out of the wood of this oak,
and it should teach you always to remember that hero who
hid the Charter…
and make you follow his example in defending your country
whenever it is in danger.
Die for your native land, Sammy, rather than
let anybody hurt it!…
The ornate cradle is preserved in the collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum, one of over 600 objects she bequeathed to their collection. This painting will be included in my book on Elizabeth Colt, her life through her collection. I am moved by its silence, the loose brushstrokes of muted colors against a dark background; it is an ominous silence to the deep loss that will greet her throughout her life.