Girl of the Bangs-Phelps Family
Over a fifty-year career that included early training with Samuel F. B. Morse, Field became one of the most successful itinerant painters in antebellum New England and New York State. He developed a repertoire of compositional formulas to depict the features and surroundings of his sitters, who belonged to the emerging rural middle class. Field’s portrait of a female member of the Bangs-Phelps family of Springfield, Massachusetts, presents her wearing an oversized, nicely detailed costume and holding a book in her right hand. The background is a soft gray color, with Field’s distinctive shaded halo of space encircling the skillfully modeled face and sharply parted hair.
Artwork Details
- Title: Girl of the Bangs-Phelps Family
- Artist: Erastus Salisbury Field (1805–1900)
- Date: ca. 1848
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 58 3/4 × 30 1/4 in. (149.2 × 76.8 cm)
Framed: 63 1/2 in. × 35 5/8 in. × 3 in. (161.3 × 90.5 × 7.6 cm) - Credit Line: Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1963
- Object Number: 63.201.4
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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