Life-Size Double Portrait by Joseph Goodhue Chandler

Inscribed on the back: "Painted for Victoria A. and Virginia R. Wilder aged 6 years/by J.G. Chandler February 1848".....   

Oil on canvas.

The sisters portrayed wearing russet dresses and white pantaloons. Likely in the area of Hubbardston, Massachusetts. This portrait delightfully conveys the bond between the two sisters, embodied by their joined hands and shoulders forming a symbolic heart, in a manner that would be difficult to show as effectively even with the realism afforded by the then emerging availability of photography. And the color certainly could not have been matched by the monochromatic photographic images of the day. Note the sizeable house on the hill behind the girls, (likely their family home), the fishermen on the nearby pond, and the foreground flowers.

Impactful scale! Sight size about 56 x 28 inches. Frame size about 66 tall x 39 wide. Paintings by Chandler are in many important antique and folk art collections, both private and institutional, the latter including the Shelburne Museum, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, the New York State Historical Museum at Cooperstown, and the National Gallery of Art......

Important Provenance includes: Hirschl & Adler; Leigh Keno; pictured and discussed in the Highly Important Americana from the Stanley Paul Sax Collection, Sotheby's, January, 1998; prominent Midwest Collection.