Provenance

Grace Geddess Davis

American, active 1889

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Three pale-skinned, blue-eyed children wearing green suits stand in a row facing us in this horizontal portrait painting. They all have round faces and full, pink cheeks. The tallest child is to the right, and he has shoulder-length cinnamon-brown hair. The other two come up to his shoulder and have blond hair. The tallest puts one arm on the far shoulder of the middle child, and the two smaller children hold hands. Each wears a pine-green, one-piece outfit with pewter-gray buttons, a wide, ivory-white collar lined with ruffles, and black, shin-high boots. The boy on our left holds a branch of dark red cherries. The middle child holds a pink rose, and the tallest a basket filled with pink roses. A black dog holding a gray and mauve-pink bird in its mouth stands in profile facing our left in the lower right corner of the canvas. The room around them has a tan-colored floor and gray walls. The room opens onto an alcove to our right with a rectangular window. A slender tree is along the left edge of the opening and a few pale, pink-tinged gray mountains line the bottom edge. Clear blue sky fills the rest of the window.
Joshua Johnson, The Westwood Children, c. 1807, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1959.11.1

The Westwood Children

Joshua Johnson · c. 1807 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1959.11.1

Bibliography

1987

  • Weekley, Carolyn J., Stile Tuttle Colwill, et al. Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter. Baltimore, Maryland, 1987: 138.