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Artist:
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attributed to Samuel Miller
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Title:
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Portrait of a Young Boy
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Date:
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c. 1835
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Medium:
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Oil on canvas
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Dimensions:
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33 9/16 x 27 1/2 in. (85.25 x 69.85 cm) (canvas)
34 3/4 x 40 3/4 x 3 3/4 in. (88.27 x 103.51 x 9.53 cm) (outer frame)
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Credit Line:
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Gift of Arnold Whitcomb Morse in memory of his parents Guilford Alden and Isabel Barton Morse
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Location:
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Gallery 304
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This portrait of an unidentified little boy wearing appropriate dress for the 1830s, including pantaloons and black slippes, incorporates many of the attributes associated with the Boston portrait painter, Samuel Miller. Of the twenty or more portraits ascribed to Miller, the majority are full-length portraits of children who are portrayed frontally in a stiff, flatly delineated fashion. Miller enhanced his compositions through the use of bold colors, and engaging ambient details, such as family pets and pots of flowers, all of which are present in our painting. The fact that the little boy is listening to his father's gold pocket watch from which a gold chain with watch fob in the form of a pistol is suspended may suggest that it is a posthumous portrait, as his time has run out - tempus fugit.
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Artist/Creator(s)
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Name:
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Miller, Samuel
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Nationality:
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American
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Life Dates:
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American, 1807 - 1853
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Object Description
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Inscriptions:
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Sticker [BROWN], on sticker, upper right corner of frame on back
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Classification:
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Paintings
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Physical Description:
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Portrait. American Folk art. Little boy wearing blue dress, white pantaloons and black shoes holding a watch on a long chain up to his proper right ear; dog behind boy on his proper right side and pot of flowers on his proper left side.
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Creation Place:
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North America, United States, New England, ,
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Accession #:
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98.239
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Owner:
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The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
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