Hidden Painting Discovered at Caramoor Leaves Some Questions Unanswered

Recent plans to restore a portrait of Caramoor co-founder Lucie Bigelow Rosen’s mother led to the discovery of a hidden oil painting that was previously unknown to the organization’s staff.

The painting of Flora Bigelow Dodge had hung for decades in the Mediterranean-style home of Lucie and her husband, Walter Tower Rosen. That is, until preparations began for a new tour focused on works by women artists in the Katonah, NY, estate’s collection.

In 2024, Jessa J. Krick, director of interpretation, collection and archives at Caramoor’s Rosen House, met with Mount Kisco-based conservator Nadia Ghannam to discuss the restoration. They agreed to remove the portrait, Mrs. Charles Stuart Dodge, c. 1901, from its decorative frame but to leave it wrapped on the inner wooden frame, called a stretcher.

Shortly afterwards, Krick was shocked to learn that Ghannam had made a discovery: “We knew the painting had a puncture hole in the lower corner. When [Ghannam] got it to her studio, she called me and said, ‘The puncture doesn’t go all the way through the canvas, and there’s a little tear on the backside that doesn’t show on the front of the painting.’”

Through the tear, Ghannam could see pigment colors that were not present on the known painting, leading her to hypothesize that there were two portraits wrapped on the stretcher.

Portrait Identified but Mystery Remains

Krick says the second painting was “instantly recognizable” as an earlier portrait of Flora Bigelow Dodge, circa 1890, commissioned by the same artist, Amanda Brewster Sewell.

Ghannam’s subsequent restoration of the hidden portrait, made possible by a Greater Hudson Heritage Network/New York State Council for the Arts grant in 2025, revealed the two portraits shared a verdure tapestry background, a style popular in 16th-18th century Europe that depicts lush green foliage.

Sewell, an American artist whose work earned a bronze medal at the world’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, and other accolades in public exhibitions in Paris and the U.S., likely hung the tapestry in her studio. It is also present in her 1902 portrait of New York architect William Robert Ware, who founded Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1881.

But the mystery surrounding the hidden painting – who knew about it, when it was hidden and why it was concealed – remains.

Krick believes that Flora preferred the later portrait, referred to as “Flora-in-furs” or “sultry Flora,” leading her to hide the earlier more formal one, in which her dress, with its sumptuous pink and green chiffon folds, cream lace, embroidered satin and fur trim, take prominence over her direct gaze.

The drama of the second portrait is evident in Henri Pène du Bois description of it in a January 3, 1903, article in New York American reviewing a National Academy of Design show: “Is the portrait of Mrs. Charles S. Dodge exact? It is a poetic image. The face is clear and delicate as a profile on a Greek medal. The thin hands are expressive. The furs with their simple sumptuousness are exquisitely in accord,” he wrote.

This theory also draws on the tale of Flora’s 1904 divorce from Charles S. Dodge. A strong and resilient woman, Flora retained her standing in society as a divorcée before marrying Lionel Guest, a first cousin of Winston Churchill, in 1905.

“I have no doubt that [Flora] had some input in how she wanted to be depicted in the second portrait,” says Krick, noting Sewell painted it while Flora’s marriage was falling apart but prior to her divorce. “There is an inherent drama here.”

The Search for Clues Continues

To date, no mentions of the earlier portrait have been found in the more-than-200 letters between Flora, her daughter Lucie, and other family members, which are stored in the Rosen House archives.

Lucie also did not reference it in her 1962 letter to James J. Rorimer, then the director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, about a shipment from her mother in England that contained the 1901 painting (and likely the hidden painting), as well as another painting by Sewell of herself at about 11 years of age. That correspondence focuses on whether a customs agent is needed to import the “two” paintings, and Lucie’s desire to show them to Rorimer.

Still, Krick says Caramoor staff, who are producing a documentary about the discovery of the hidden painting, have not given up. This summer, a research fellow will continue to review and transcribe Flora’s correspondences. Additionally, further clues might be found in the archives of the New York Public Library or Union College in Schenectady, NY, which contain some Bigelow family documents.

Alternatively, more research on Sewell who, despite her success as a woman artist of her time, does not have a catalogue raisonné, might yield some answers. Her husband, Robert Van Vorst Sewell, also an artist, managed her correspondence, which are in the collections of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.

With the mystery unsolved, Caramoor visitors can come to their own conclusions. Docent-guided tours of the European and Asian decorative arts-filled Rosen House, including the two Sewell paintings, which are currently hung in the theremin and music rooms, are offered three times daily on Fridays and Saturdays.

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_{Photos (top to bottom): American artist Amanda Brewster Sewell painted both portraits of Mrs. Charles Stuart Dodge: the hidden portrait (left) 43 3/8 x 36 inches (unframed), circa 1890, and the long-displayed portrait (right) 43 x 37 inches (unframed), circa 1901; Rosen House with flowers in bloom at Caramoor (photo credit: Gabe Palacio)}