Celebrating The American Wing: American Portraits | Explore & Learn

An itinerant artist active in towns along the Massachusetts-Connecticut border, Phillips painted hundreds of portraits over his long career. Phillips was an untrained rural painter, but his work projects a sophisticated quality, so masterful was he in terms of design, color, and composition. Here, his abilities are evident in the cleanly contained forms of the mother and child, enriched by his use of a brilliant saturated palette and careful detail. His daring sense of color connects him to other contemporary folk painters, but the austerity of his vision sets him apart.

Roll over the image with your mouse to explore details of this painting in greater depth.

Related Works: 1 2

Object Menu

Detail 1 · Detail 2

Full-screen image (28K)

Mrs. Mayer and Daughter, 1835–40
Ammi Phillips (1788–1865)
Oil on canvas; 37 7/8 x 34 1/4 in. (96.2 x 87 cm)
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1962 (62.256.2)

printing instructions

Photograph Credits