Portrait of a Child

c. 1840

Edward Hicks

Painter, American, 1780 - 1849

A pale-skinned child wearing a short-sleeved red dress and a white bonnet stands before a shadowy green forest under dark clouds in this vertical portrait painting. The child’s over-large head is out of scale with the rest of her body. She looks toward us with brown eyes in her wide, round-jawed face. She has a broad nose, and her pale lips are set in a line. Her lace bonnet lines her black hair like frothy seafoam and is tied with spring-green bows at the top and under her right ear, to our left. The low neckline of her crimson dress is lined with a wide white ruffle. Red fabric covers her hands, which are gathered in front of her waist. Gray clouds sweep over the hazy green forest in the background. A gnarled tree grows up the left side of the painting, framing the girl.

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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The Burton family, near Bristol, Pennsylvania; sold to (Robert Carlen, Philadelphia);[1] sold to (Edith Gregor Halpert, Downtown Gallery, New York); sold 1944 to (M. Knoedler and Co., New York); sold 1944 to Joseph Katz, New York; sold 1945 to (M. Knoedler and Co., New York);[2] sold 1947 to Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, Pokety Farms, Cambridge, Maryland; bequest 1980 to NGA.
[1] Robert Carlen recalls purchasing the painting near Bristol, Pennsylvania, from the Burtons. Downtown Gallery records (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington) state that the painting was "Purchased from a member of the family residing in Tullytown, near Newtown, Pennsylvania. This Quaker family also had in its possession a Peaceable Kingdom [now in the Elkins collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art] and `The Declaration of Independence,' acquired by the gallery at the same time." Although the Downtown Gallery records do not name the Burton family, two other sources indicate their identity. A dealer from the area remembers that the Burton family owned a Declaration of Independence and a Peaceable Kingdom. In addition, research conducted by a local citizen in 1920 (now in the collection of the Bucks County Historical Society) reveals that a Horace Burton of Edgley owned a Declaration of Independence. Eleanore Price Mather provided these two pieces of corroborating information by telephone, 30 April 1982.
[2] Frederick Newlin Price, Edward Hicks 1780-1849, The Benjamin West Society, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, 1945: 22, lists the painting as belonging to M. Knoedler & Company in that year.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1945

  • Price, Frederick Newlin. Edward Hicks 1780-1849. The Benjamin West Society, Swarthmore College. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 1945: 22.

1983

  • Mather, Eleanore Price. Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings. Newark, Delaware, 1983: 204, no. 115.

1992

  • Chotner, Deborah, with contributions by Julie Aronson, Sarah D. Cash, and Laurie Weitzenkorn. American Naive Paintings. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 196-197, repro. 197.

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 202, repro.

2021

  • Schwartz, Sanford. On Edward Hicks. Seattle, 2021: 95-96, color repro.

Inscriptions

on reverse at top edge in fancy script: HAW

Wikidata ID

Q20186821

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