Portraits with Purpose

Jeremy Simien strolled into his office and gestured about the room. “This is a wall of Creoles,” he said.

The room is hung with more than a dozen works of art, including paintings by such well-known artists as Jacques Amans, Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, Adolphe Rinck, and C.R. Parker.

“I’ve dedicated months to researching this one,” said Simien, who often dedicates at least a month to each portrait he acquires. “It’s a portrait by Amans of André Bienvenu Roman, whose family came from Grenoble, France, to Opelousas. He was the brother of Jacques Roman, who built Oak Alley. 

“A. B. Roman, who was twice governor of Louisiana, died in 1866 in New Orleans at the home of his daughter Jeanne, who married Eli de la Villebeuvre.”

Simien also owns a portrait of Jeanne, an 1854 work by Rinck. “She was painted by three great painters at different times of her life,” said Simien. “Amans painted her as a child, Rinck and François Bernard painted her as an adult.” 

He noted details such as the paisley table covering, a sheer lace ruffle, and a gold ring. “It makes sense that she would dress fashionably for her sitting, because Rinck’s wife was a clothier,” said Simien, who seems to know every detail of the sitters’ and the painters’ lives.

“We loaned this painting to Oak Alley for two years because we wanted the public to view it and thought it belonged back in one of the family homes,” said Simien. “We have also lent pieces to the West Baton Rouge Museum, the LSU Museum of Art, and the Louisiana State Museum.”

Parker’s painting of Penelope Lynch Adams Andrews is called The Lady of Belle Grove. “Her husband John Andrews built Belle Grove Plantation, but she died before the house was built,” said Simien. “He raised their five daughters and never remarried. The painting hung at Belle Grove until a daughter took it to Governor Paul Octave Hébert’s plantation near Nottoway.”

The portrait was far from Nottoway when Simien recently found it at an auction house in Detroit and won it in an online bid.

“Everything in here is Louisiana oriented,” said Simien, thirty-three, who in just five years has amassed an impressive collection of early- to mid-nineteenth century Louisiana portraits.

His focus is on Louisiana Creoles, whom he defines as “people born here who are not indigenous.” His particular interest is Creoles of color, reflecting his own heritage. 

“A Louisiana Creole is a person with colonial roots in Louisiana, including enslaved people and free people of African descent,” said Simien, himself a descendant of a Frenchman who came to Louisiana and a Senegalese woman. 

“Antoine De Simiane fled the French Revolution. He came to New Orleans and then moved to the Opelousas area. He met a Senegalese woman named Marie on an adjacent plantation. He purchased her and freed her and her children. Their son George Simien is my fifth great-grandfather.”

Simien particularly focuses on gens de couleur libres, free men and women of color who were either born free, liberated, or purchased their own freedom during the antebellum period. 

[Read this: At a 1970 auction near Natchitoches, a church won back the portrait of its founder.]

“They were people of various degrees of African descent,” said Simien. “At one time, they accounted for a fifth of the population of New Orleans, owned a third of the property in the Vieux Carré [French Quarter], and had an eighty-percent literacy rate. This important group included planters, skilled tradesmen, inventors, real-estate developers, and speculators.”

Portraits of free people of color are rare—partly, he said, because descendants sometimes destroyed them in an effort to hide their origins and pass for white. They can also be hard to find because Creoles of color left rapidly after Reconstruction. “The paintings went wherever the owners went,” he said.

“They are important because they’re so rare,” said Simien. “They give insight into Louisiana’s complex history. There’s a lack of representation of them in museums. Images of slavery are important, but so are images of people who were successful against the odds.”

Simien is single-mindedly focused on the search. He leaves home each morning at six. At his favorite coffee house, he flips open his laptop and searches for art online for two or three hours. 

“I look through hundreds of paintings every day,” he said. “I’m a painting nut.”

He has found paintings in Mexico, France, Scotland, and The Netherlands, as well as in Michigan, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and California. “The internet has opened up the possibility of bringing these portraits back to Louisiana,” said Simien. 

He attends auctions, mostly in New Orleans, and also bids online in small-town auctions.

He prizes a Franz Fleischbein painting sold to him by a fellow collector. “We only know of two dozen paintings by him,” said Simien. “I’m trying to [confirm] who the sitter was. He was a free man of color. I believe he was a respected home builder/real-estate speculator, but I am still doing research.”

A small painting of a young girl with a piquant expression is signed “J.H 1828.” “It is by Julien Hudson, [a free man of color] who was an apprentice to Fleischbein. [Fleischbein] did more paintings of Creoles of color than anyone.” 

Simien and his wife Lindsay have more paintings in their home in the Country Club of Louisiana neighborhood, which they have furnished with period antiques mixed with modern pieces.

“This armoire is the first piece we ever bought at auction,” said Simien, opening the doors of the c. 1810 inlaid mahogany piece to reveal a small collection of reference books, including the Louisiana Portraits book; Nineteenth Century Louisiana Painters and Paintings from the Collection of W. E. Groves; auction catalogs, including vintage ones; and the 1992 auction catalog from the sale of work collected by Groves.

In the kitchen, a recently purchased mantel leans against the wall, flanked by two ladderback chairs. “The mantel is from Mamou,” said Simien. “I bought it online. It’s probably a copy of a fine piece. It is a country Creole mantel of cypress, painted white, with a diamond shape in the center called a ‘lozenge,’ painted Creole green.  Paint scrapings from the mantel revealed several colors under the white–blue, and a very early black paint that likely had a faux marbre finish. 

“This ladderback chair dates to about 1810. Its cowhide seat has been worn down over the years; there’s no fur left on it. We got it from a New Orleans auction house. The other chair is an 1850s Acadian or country Creole chair from Mamou.”

In the living room, Simien pointed out his favorite piece, an 1838 portrait of a man holding a letter. “The letter shows he’s literate. This was in Bordeaux, France. I found it on a website of Parisian antiques dealers and called the dealer. He described the man as ‘metif’ [a person of mixed race]. I’m still doing research on the identity of the sitter and the painter.”

Growing up in Baton Rouge, Simien was more interested in music than art. “I wanted to be a musician, but my parents told me, ‘That’s not a career!’ I had my own recording studio. I recorded bands, did post production. I composed music for an independent horror film, The Woodshed.”

These days, he is an advertising consultant, handling “bus benches, billboards, social media, and TV commercials.”

Lindsay Simien, a school guidance counselor, grew up in New Orleans and moved to Baton Rouge to get her master’s degree at LSU. “I worked at Borders Bookstore,” she said. “I noticed Jeremy coming in and working on his laptop. We started talking and really hit it off.” They married in 2014. 

In an upstairs guest room, Simien points out an 1820s French lithograph by an unknown artist. It depicts a young white woman showing a young black woman her face in a mirror. She is gripping the girl’s shoulder with one hand and face with the other. The black girl’s face looks stereotyped, distorted. 

“This is in stark contrast to the other images I’ve collected,” Simien said. “It’s a caricature. The white woman has dressed the black woman up and is pinching her cheeks. She is having fun with her, as though she is a pet.

“This illustrates the difference between pieces commissioned for the benefit of people of African descent and pieces commissioned for others that are sometimes exploitative.” 

Another portrait is “an oil-on-canvas copy of a portrait of my ancestor Martin Donato Bello, a free man of color. His home in Opelousas is still standing. There are three original portraits of him that are still in the possession of family members.” 

Once he acquires a painting, Simien does extensive research on it. “I do genealogy on the subject on [the website] Ancestry. I use auction catalogs, information from the State Archives and the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center. I also consult Facebook groups including one on Louisiana portraits.”

He records the date he purchased a work and where it has been displayed. “I keep a complete file on every piece,” said Simien, who also takes photos of each work before and after conservation, if it is needed.

[Read this: Mark Lazarre combines legal and genealogical research skills to unpuzzle the past.]

Simien also collects photographs, including a Roman family album found on eBay. “To be respected as a collector you have to be a collector of all important objects,” he said. “I have to have a collection that’s well rounded. 

“I’m trying to share our unique cultural history, trying to tell the complete story. Some of our ancestors were not on the right side of history. It’s ours to reconcile and to understand. Sometimes we have to be face to face with uncomfortable facts.”

Most of all, he said, “I’m trying to preserve them. Collectors never truly own these objects. We’re really just taking care of them for future generations.” 

Follow along with Simien’s work on Instagram, @jeremy.k.simien, or email jeremysimien@gmail.com for advice on collecting portraits. Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.