Portrait of Henry Wood Booth

Boston-trained artist Harold Brett specialized in portraiture and illustrations. Having studied under the famed Delware-based illustrator Howard Pyle, his work evinced many qualities of the Brandywine School—rich color, fine detailing of costume and setting, and an emphasis on character conveyed theatrically through expression and gesture.

Harold Brett painted three portraits at Cranbrook during a visit to Detroit in 1936, when Warren Scripps Booth commissioned him to paint portraits of his parents George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth. In 1950, after George and Ellen's deaths, Brett returned to Cranbrook to paint copies of the two portraits, which remained the property of Warren Scripps Booth's family. The copies served as the Cranbrook Foundation’s memorial gift to mark the founders’ deaths. They now hang in the Oak Room at Cranbrook House (see CEC 47.1 and CEC 47.2). The posthumous portrait of Henry Wood Booth was likely commissioned by George Booth and Ellen Booth themselves, as it has remained at Cranbrook House from 1936 to the present day.

Henry Wood Booth (1837-1925) was George Booth’s father, an enterprising coppersmith and unlucky businessman, a devout Episcopalian, and a lifelong campaigner for temperance. Brett depicts Henry as a scholarly figure, with an open book on his knee, dressed in a voluminous black coat that evokes an academic robe. His calm, thoughtful glance and loosely knotted tie suggest an evening spent in solitary study, reflecting the dedication to literary work which marked Henry's final years.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024