William Harris Cary began his career as a merchant in Boston, working with his brother Isaac Harris Cary, but they soon moved operations to New York City in order to expand the business. During the 1800s, New York was a major center of trade and the Cary brothers capitalized on this by importing and selling a wide range of items from buttons to cutlery. Upon his death in 1861, Cary’s firm was the largest importer of ‘fancy goods’ in the country. A later portrait of William Harris Cary by Edgar Parker (1840-1892) also hangs in this room.
Charles E. Osgood (1809-1890) was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts. After unsuccessfully working as a bank clerk, he moved to Boston to study painting. He would later split his time between Salem and New York City, but was most successful in his hometown. During his career as a portraitist, he painted several prominent figures including Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Quincy Adams. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Historical Society.