Portrait of a Young Boy and a Spaniel in an Interior

Attributed to a North American painter, c.1830.

Portrait of a young boy and a spaniel in an interior.

Oil on canvas

21 1/8” wide, 26.5” high (canvas only)

28.5 inches wide, 33 5/8” high, 2” deep

We are grateful to Luis Vasquez, Collection Manager at the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, for noting the stylistic affinity of our painting with work produced in New England and in Pennsylvania and New York, as well as its awareness of British portraiture of the same date.

This lively portrait of a boy playing with his dog is datable to c.1830 by the boy’s frock coat, with its narrow waist and long hemline. The boy’s costume and the fittings in the room, such as the green velvet table cloth with its silver acanthus and maple leaf pattern identify his family as members of the prosperous middle-class. Mr Vasquez compares it with the portraits of George and Frances E. Mason by an unknown artist in the Rhode Island Historical Society’s collection. Children at this date were often shown with favourite toys, or at a preferred activity. George Mason, for example, is shown with his rocking horse. Another painting of this date, the portrait of Miss Frances A. Motley c.1830–33 attributed to John Samuel Blunt (1798–1836) in the collection of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, shows the sitter holding her workbasket with a piece of embroidery on the table in front of her.

The formal clothes worn by the boy in our portrait and the fact that he has been playing with a carved wooden set of Noah’s Ark and animals suggest that our painting depicts him on a Sunday. Noah’s Arks were especially popular in the nineteenth century with Protestant families in Great Britain and the United States of America. It was the only toy that children were allowed to play with after church.They were produced at this date in the Erzgebirge region of Germany by the families of iron ore miners to supplement their incomes. As mining declined, Noah’s Ark production became an industry there and Arks were made for global export, particularly to Britain and America. Comparable examples of this date can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, at Scotney Castle, Kent (National Trust) and with the Lincoln County Historical Association, Wiscasset, Maine.

In this painting, the artist suggests that the boy has given up this quiet, morally improving activity to play a game with the dog. The red book he has been reading is dropped open on the floor and figures of Noah’s wife and the animals have been knocked over in the rough and tumble. The painter captures a moment where the boy is teasing the dog, restraining its head with one hand and holding a pair of cherries high up out of its reach with the other.

Cherries are an established metaphor in painting for innocence. In Old Master paintings,such as Still-life with Cherries and Strawberries in china bowls by Osias Beert the elder (c.1580–1624) in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, they represent the fruits of Eden. Later portraits of children frequently include them as a symbol of the innocence of youth, such as the portrait of Mary Hall ‘Girl with cherries’ by John Russell (1745–1806) in the Louvre, Paris. In our painting – in keeping with the playful tone of the picture – they have become a prop in a game.It is, of course, difficult to make assumptions about sitters or patrons from a single portrait, but the way that our artist shows the boy rough housing with the dog on Sunday suggests that his parents had a sense of humour, and that they respected the conventions of Sunday behaviour without following them puritanically.

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Thx for looking Chris.