CC0 · no rights reserved
Man in Yellow Chair
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
In the early nineteenth century, prosperous Americans along the eastern seaboard hired traveling artists to create their portraits in a forthright style made popular in colonial times by itinerant limners. This portrait of an unidentified gentleman follows that style, with strong lines that suggest, but don’t realistically replicate, the man’s features and the details of his costume. Most clients for such portraits lived outside the major urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and it is likely that this gentleman was a plantation owner of some means.
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionCredit lineMan in Yellow Chair. ca. 1820. Unidentified. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson. CC0.
