Group portraits in Picturing America at the Newark Museum

Magazine Antiques, April, 2001 by Holly Pyne Connor

Finally, Mary Cassatt's Jenny Cassatt with Her Son, Gardner, Painted in 1895 and 1896 (Pl. X), captures the theme of family love, devotion, and pride found in all of the group portraits discussed above. [20] While Cassatt's painting represents a stylistic departure from the earlier portraits because it is painted in the bright colors and broad broken brushstrokes of impressionism, it is a compelling portrait of maternal love, the cornerstone of family life, as is Family Group, the earliest portrait discussed in this article.

The group portraits considered here are but a few of more than 250 works of art on view in Picturing America. Each has a profound and engaging story to tell, providing an enriching experience for both first-time visitors to the museum and those familiar with American art.

I am deeply grateful to my colleagues at the Newark Museum: Ulysses Grant Dietz, curator of decorative arts, and Joseph Jacobs, curator of American art, for their support and encouragement.

HOLLY PYNE CONNOR is the consulting curator of American art at the Newark Museum in New Jersey and a co-curator of Picturing America.

(1.) All the group portraits discussed in this article, with the exception of those shown in Pls. III and XI, are listed in American Art in The Newark Museum (Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, 1981).

(2.) In earlier group portraits husbands tended to be placed in a more elevated position than their wives, frequently standing while their wives were depicted sitting down.

(3.) For more about these ideas, see Margaretta M. Lovell, "Reading Eighteenth-Century American Family Portraits: Social Images and Self-Images," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1987), pp. 243--264.

(4.) Mary Black attributed this painting to Ammi Phillips on the basis of photographs (Mary Black, Germantown, New York, to Gary Reynolds, May 31, 1989 [archives, Newark Museum]). If this work is by Phillips, it is his only known double portrait of a husband and wife.

(5.) See David B. Lawall, Asher Brown Durand: His Art and Art Theory in Relation to His Times (Garland Publishing, New York, 1977), pp. 121--124, for a discussion of this painting and its relation to English portraits.

(6.) William H. Gerdts and Carrie Rebora, The Art of Henry Inman (National Portrait Gallery Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 62, 67, 90, 96, 104, 105.

(7.) See Kids! 200 Years of Childhood (Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur Delaware, 1999), p.12.

(8.) For more about this concept of childhood, see Anne Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (Thames and Hudson, London, 1998), pp. 15--71.

(9.) Edith Bishop, Oliver Tarbell Eddy, 1799--1868 (Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey 1950), p.24.

(10.) For a discussion of the iconography of these bouquets, see Barbara Rothmel, "Mourning the Children," Folk Art, vol. 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997/98), p. 63.

(11.) For more about Eddy and Rankin, see Bishop, Oliver Tarbell Eddy, pp.7--19, 26.

(12.) For what little is known about Rockwell, see John D. Beatty, "All That Is True and Beautiful: The Flowering of Artistic Expression in