A Family Portrait
American or English, circa 1840-1850
Oil on canvas, in gilt frame, 21 ¾ x 26 ¼ inches

Portraits document familial relations, but also, as possibly in this example, mortality and loss. The father, sitting at right, wears a wedding band on his finger. The absence of a female sitter with a wedding band suggests this father is a widower, further emphasized by the subtle, but unusual distance of space that separates him from his two children. The artist has imbued the scene with a mood of restraint and somber modesty, capturing a moment in time when emotion, characteristic of Romanticism, was giving way to the restraint of the Victorian era.

$3,500