Edward Matthews as a Young Boy

Periodca. 1845

MediumOil on wood panel

Dimensions43.8 × 32.2 in. (111.3 × 81.8 cm)

ClassificationsPortraits

Credit LineGift of Lauretta Stillwell Miller in memory of her mother, Laura Stillwell Miller, 1939

Object number1405

DescriptionFull length portrait of a young boy with long blonde hair facing left, wearing a brown skirt, black shoes, green and orange stockings, a brown hat, and a red ribbon in his hair. He is holding a stick and a hoop, and is leaning against a dirt bank in a landscape setting with distant fields and hills on the left.
Curatorial RemarksFor much of the nineteenth century, it was often difficult to identify gender in child portraiture. Boys typically wore dresses until making the transition to pants at about the age of five or six. Like girls, they also wore hair ringlets, as is apparent in this portrait of Edward Matthews. The young lad is posed on the edge of a hillside holding a stick and a hoop. The sensitive rendering of the tot’s plump face and other polished details of the work suggests that the painter was an academically trained artist, probably from New York or Philadelphia. The representation of the embroidery on Edwin’s dress is equally impressive, as is the careful delineation of the rolling countryside in the background.NotesEdward Matthews was born in the early 1840s, a son of Garret Matthews and Anne Gillies. He was a first cousin of the donor’s mother, Laura Stillwell Miller.

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