Description:
Portrait miniature of Joseph Nichols Gage attributed to Rufus Porter; frontal facing portrait of a young man, he wears a dark gray coat, with a black vest and cravat, and white shirt, his face sports long sideburns and his dark brown hair has a tuft sticking up in the center, the top and left side of the image is stamped with the ink inscription, "MR JOSEPH.N. GAGE." The portrait is shown in a molded gilt frame. By the 1830s, Porter’s style had evolved further still. He began to favor frontal poses and to use stippling and cross-hatching for modeling, resulting in an overall effect that is more graphic than sculptural. Judging by the scarcity of known miniatures from his later period, his output in this genre had dropped significantly. Perhaps he was already anticipating that the art of miniature painting would soon be made obsolete by advances in still photography.
Label Text:
Joseph Nichols Gage, a trader from Merrimack, New Hampshire, and Jane Noyes, his second wife, are
Porter’s last known portraits of identified sitters and likely date to the time of their 1837 marriage. The
printed names on the sheets are uncommon.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2023.8.19 |
