Mary and Francis Wilcox
Joseph Whiting Stock·1845
Historical Context
Joseph Whiting Stock's portrait of Mary and Francis Wilcox from 1845 represents the thriving folk portrait tradition of antebellum America. Stock, who was paralyzed from the waist down since age eleven, painted over 900 portraits from a wheelchair during his career in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. His children's portraits are particularly charming, combining the bright colors and precise detail of the folk tradition with genuine warmth.
Technical Analysis
Stock's oil-on-canvas technique demonstrates the crisp, detailed approach of American folk portraiture with bright, clear colors and precise delineation of features and clothing. The flat, even lighting and carefully rendered details of the children's dress reflect the folk artist's emphasis on documentary accuracy.
Provenance
Mr. and Mrs. Philo Franklin Wilcox, Springfield, Massachusetts, by 1845; by inheritance to their son, Frank P. Wilcox; his daughter, Theresa Wilcox Powers, by 1949; her niece, Josephine Powers Clapp [Mrs. R. Duncan Clapp], Sarasota, Florida, 1949-1953;[1] sold to (Peter Kostoff, Springfield, Massachusetts); sold 1953 to Edgar and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch; gift 1959 to NGA. [1] Josephine Clapp, in a letter of 3 July 1974 to William Campbell (in NGA curatorial files), states that when she and Mr. Clapp inherited her aunt's house in Springfield, Mass., in 1949, they found this (and two other individual Stock portraits of the same children) in the attic. She sold the double portrait, as it was too large to hang in her home, but kept the other two until 1974.
.jpg&width=600)