Eunice Makepeace Towle Explained

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Eunice Makepeace Towle (–) was an American portrait painter. Her subjects included US Presidents John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk, and Martin Van Buren.

Eunice Makepeace was born on May 4, 1806, in Norton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Lysander and Sarah Makepeace. She married Dr. Nathaniel C. Towle in 1831.^[1] Their children included George Makepeace Towle, lawyer, author, and translator of Jules Verne.^[2]

Dr. Towle encouraged John Quincy Adams to sit for a portrait by her. Adams could be quite caustic in his diary about artists, and he wrote about Towle "Her portrait of me painted in October 1837 is hideous....the word applicable to all her works is not paint, but daub." Adams also loaned Towle Gilbert Stuart's portrait of his father John Adams, which she copied. The location of her portrait of John Quincy Adams is unknown.^[3]

Eunice Makepeace Towle died on October 19, 1894, in Andover, Massachusetts.^[4]

External links

• http://www.artnet.com/artists/eunice-makepeace-towle/

Notes and References

1. Web site: Vital records of Norton, Massachusetts, to the year 1850 . 2023-01-09 . Internet Archive . 105, 324 . en.
2. Book: The New England Historical and Genealogical Register . 1889 . New England Historic Genealogical Society . en.
3. Book: Oliver, Andrew . Portraits of John Quincy Adams and his wife . 1970 . Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press . Internet Archive . 978-0-674-69152-0 . 190–92.
4. "Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1920", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NWZH-R4Y : 13 December 2022), Eunice Makepeace Towle, 1894.