Description:
three quarter portrait of serious woman in long sleeved flowered dress, necklace, holding spotted dog, leash in proper left hand, right arm on dog's back, dark hair parted in center and held back with a bow; girl; animal; costume/uniform
Label Text:
This portrait belongs to a group of three portraits painted by Horace Bundy in January, 1852, in Nashua, New Hampshire. The portraits of the parents of this little girl are owned by the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. All three paintings adopt the same oval format, with the sitters seated on fine parlor chairs against a silhouette backdrop of trees, whose branches, formed from scalloped-shaped hatch marks, are echoed in the pattern of the girl's pink dress. The spotted dog at the girl's side, once identified as a dalmatian, is more likely a mixed breed with floppy ears and a black patch around his left eye. Horace Bundy was born in Hardwick, Vermont, and lived for a time in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he married Louisa Lockwood in 1837. He was an Adventist as well as an itinerant portrait artist (though without formal training), and in his work and travels throughout New England he combined both callings. He became pastor of the Second Advent Church in Lakeport, New Hampshire, in 1863, and by the 1870's he was producing few portraits. A trip in 1883 to Jamaica and a wealthy planter patron he met there renewed his interest in painting, but before returning to his country he died from the typhus he presumably contracted during his visit.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1957.64 |
