The round-trip journey of the childhood portrait of Jenny Clapp (Culver), Pasadena’s first schoolteacher, offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of historically significant objects and the sometimes serendipitous manner in which an item finds its way back home. Art dealer Robert DeLapp grew up with this painting and was instrumental in bringing his family’s cherished artwork back to Pasadena and, specifically, to PMH last year. Here, he reminisces about growing up with Jenny and shares his own Pasadena-centric family history.
I can’t say when and where I first remember seeing the portrait of Jenny – it just somehow has always been in our family’s possession. We didn’t know the little girl’s name for years, but as my siblings and I grew older, we learned that this was Pasadena’s first schoolteacher, Jenny Clapp Culver (1856-1937). The artist, we later discovered, was Edwin T. Billings, a Massachusetts born portrait painter of some repute during his lifetime.
Pasadena has always been a part of my family’s history, on both my mother & father’s side. All my siblings and I were born at Huntington Memorial Hospital, as were both of my parents. My father, Terry DeLapp (1934-2020) was born and raised in Pasadena and became a successful local art dealer specializing in American Art of the late 19th and early 20th Century. His grandmother, Hazel Elwell Rhodes had been a member of the Cauldron Singers, a well-known singing group active in Pasadena society in the 1920’s & 30’s. My father lived for a time with his grandmother and her husband, Judge Roy V. Rhodes, in their English Tudor home on Hillside Road in South Pasadena, a house which still stands today.
My Mother, Maria Marcus DeLapp (1934-2023) also hailed from Pasadena. Her parents had a wonderful Gordon Kauffman designed home on South San Rafael overlooking the Arroyo.
My Grandfather on that side, David Marcus, was a pioneering civil rights attorney. His case, “Mendez vs. Westminster,” marked the end of racial segregation in California public schools.
When my father started his fledgling art career in 1959, my grandmother financed many of his early purchases, the Jenny Clapp portrait being one of them. The painting was likely bought inexpensively, her prior whereabouts of the preceding 100 years a mystery to this day. The market for early American art was nearly non-existent at the time, my father being the only West Coast dealer specializing in that specific area back then.
Paintings came and went, but Jenny’s portrait, for whatever reason, never left my grandmother’s house. When she died in 1980, the painting was given to my uncle, David Marcus Jr., who displayed it in his Sausalito home for several years. After he passed in the late 1980s, it was left to my mother, who also had moved to the Bay Area by then. It proudly hung in her living room for the next 30-plus years. When she passed last year, it was up to us siblings to decide where Jenny’s next home should be. An old handwritten letter attached to the back of the painting filled in some of the historical blanks, and we all then agreed that it should go back to Pasadena.
Being an art dealer myself, my first thought was that a museum or historical society based in Pasadena would be the most appropriate next place of residence for Jenny Clapp Culver.
On a serendipitous impulse, I approached PMH executive director Jeannette O’Malley, who was immediately enthusiastic about the painting, and with the gracious help of Nancy Moure, all the pieces somehow fit into place.
The portrait now proudly hangs in what I hope will be Jenny’s forever home at Pasadena Museum of History, a stone’s throw away from my grandmother’s house on South San Rafael Avenue. I’m certain that my mother would be very happy to know Jenny has finally returned home again.
~ Robert DeLapp
