A rare painting created nearly two centuries ago by one of Louisiana’s earliest portrait artists has found a permanent home at the Historic New Orleans Collection, bringing renewed attention to a possible connection between the artwork, Melrose Plantation and the Metoyer family of Natchitoches Parish. The painting, Creole Boy with a Moth, was completed in 1835 by Julien Hudson, Louisiana’s first native-born portraitist and the second-known portraitist of color in American history. Only six of Hudson’s works are known to survive.
The Historic New Orleans Collection recently acquired the painting and another Hudson portrait through a gift from the Robert and Martha Bolton Living Trust in memory of James D. (Don) Didier. Erin Greenwald, deputy director of the Historic New Orleans Collection, explained how researchers connected the painting to Natchitoches through historical photographs and archival records.
According to Greenwald, art historian William Rudolph identified a photograph of the painting in a 1925 scrapbook compiled by Louisiana writer Lyle Saxon while he was living at Melrose Plantation. The scrapbook is preserved at Northwestern State University’s Cammie G. Henry Research Center in Natchitoches. The photograph appears beneath a handwritten heading reading “Mulatto Portraits.” Another notation identifies the subject as “Dominic Metoyer, 1836.”
However, researchers have not confirmed that identification.
The same scrapbook page contains a photograph of a woman of color wearing a tignon and shawl. Both portraits have identical frames, suggesting they may have been commissioned by the same family. The woman’s portrait is believed to depict Marie Agnes Poissot Metoyer. The connection is significant because Melrose Plantation, originally established as Yucca Plantation in the 1790s, was associated with the Metoyer family until the family lost the property in 1847.
“Unfortunately, we currently cannot trace the painting’s ownership earlier than its 1925 presence at Melrose Plantation,” Greenwald said.
Researchers also cannot establish precisely how the portraits arrived at Melrose or what happened to Creole Boy with a Moth between 1925 and its anonymous sale through Sotheby’s in 2000. Although the scrapbook identifies the boy as Dominic Metoyer, Rudolph’s research suggests other family members may be more likely candidates.
Two possibilities are Nelcourt Baptiste Metoyer, born in 1827, and his younger brother, Auguste Paulin Metoyer, born in 1829. Both were sons of Auguste Augustin Metoyer, a son of Nicolas Metoyer, and lived in New Orleans during the 1830s, when Hudson was working there. The painting’s 1835 date would place Nelcourt at approximately eight years old and Auguste Paulin at six. Other Metoyer children, including those named Dominic, remain possible subjects.
“Because there is no smoking gun or perfect provenance linking the painting directly to the Metoyers, we cannot be 100% certain of the sitter’s family ties,” Greenwald said. “What we do have is evidence that strongly suggests a connection.”
Beyond its possible connection to Cane River history, the portrait represents a rare visual record of Louisiana’s free communities of color before the Civil War. Hudson was born in New Orleans in 1811 to a property-owning free woman of color and a white English merchant. He began as a tailor’s apprentice before studying painting in New Orleans and Paris. He died at age 33, leaving only a small collection of surviving artwork.
Of his six known signed paintings, two depict children. Creole Boy with a Moth is the only one depicting a subject who, like Hudson, appears to have mixed European and African ancestry.
“It is incredibly rare to encounter works of people of color painted by an artist of color in the pre–Civil War period, and rarer still for the sitter to be a child,” Greenwald said. The portrait depicts a formally dressed boy against a rural landscape, with a colorful moth resting on his right hand. Greenwald noted that moths and butterflies sometimes symbolized death and rebirth in historical portraiture, raising the possibility that the painting was created as a memorial.
The two paintings were previously displayed at the Historic New Orleans Collection in 2011 as loans from Robert and Martha Bolton. Following the couple’s deaths in 2024, the museum learned the works had been bequeathed to its permanent collection.
They arrived in late 2025 and went on public display in September 2026. Greenwald said the museum welcomes information from Metoyer descendants, genealogists and historians that could help identify the boy.
“There is always room for further research, and we would welcome any information from descendants, researchers, and others with interesting leads that could help us further understand this painting and its sitter,” she said.
The paintings are displayed at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street in New Orleans. Admission is free, and the center is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Additional information is available at https://hnoc.org/exhibitions/two-portraits-by-julien-hudson.