Mollie Crease Peay Worthen [1856-1944]

Painted by Henry Byrd [c.1804-1885]
Oil on Striped Bed ticking
H: 29.75”, W: 24.688”
Gift of the Mollie Walsh Estate
94.8.1

This painting of Mollie Peay is a charming portrait by Henry Byrd, Arkansas’s most prolific painter of the nineteenth century. Mollie was born June 25, 1856, and was the daughter of Gordon Neill and Sue Crease Peay. She later married William Booker Worthen. Mollie Peay died in 1944 and is buried in the W. B. Worthen lot in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock. Henry Byrd was born in Ireland in 1805, moved to America and later lived and worked in Arkansas as a portrait painter from 1840 to 1865. He is considered to be Arkansas's most prolific painter of the 19th century. He traveled throughout Arkansas painting portraits of some of state’s finest citizens. He eventually left the state to reside permanently in New Orleans where he continued to paint. Byrd died in New Orleans on September 26, 1884 at the age of 79.