This double portrait of children, which recently came to light in a New York collection, appears unprecedented in the history of formal American portraiture.[1] As an interracial portrait from ante-bellum America, it is an extraordinary rarity; added to this is the palpable sense of attachment between the subjects, imparted by composition, gesture and symbol.

The likely elder girl, on the left, gestures towards her companion with a pink rose, while resting her hand on her shoulder; her companion, who turns towards her, holds an open chapbook. The message is one of familiarity and affection, which might well suggest the young girls are from the same household and possibly biologically related. The concept of a formal portrait is reinforced by the inclusion of a tied-back, background curtain, by now a well-established prop in American portraiture. Their style of dress and overall deportment indicates a relatively prosperous upbringing in a middle-class household, and the symbolic trappings further hint towards material advantage.

Within the canon of Western portraiture, books were common accessories used in portraits to indicate the erudition of the sitter, and in this instance emblematic of a highly significant period in in the expansion of literacy and printing in North America. The book we see here is a chapbook, which was an unbound paper pamphlet sold by travelling chapmen, who were sometimes referred to as ‘travelling stationers’.[2] Chapbooks were widely read after the American Revolution as presses rapidly sprang up in seaports and inland towns. From 1800 to 1821 New England experienced ‘a veritable flood’[3] of children’s books, many of which were reprints from the previous decades, often of the exceedingly popular English editions. In the case of Cinderella, the tale was so beloved that in certain states it became a popular name for infant girls.[4] Whether there was a more specific connection intended between the two girls and the choice of chapbook is open to speculation. The Cinderella tale was one of morality and certainly contains elements that could fit a possible backstory of the portrait, namely themes of sisterhood or step-sisterhood, temporary enslavement, and the rightful ‘restoration’ of the key protagonist through the guise of dress and altered perception.

It could be argued that the girl on the left is shown with a degree of seniority, positioned higher within the composition, and with her forearm resting casually upon her more diminutive companion.[5] She is also adorned in additional jewellery, with coral bracelets on her wrists and a pair of coral droplet earrings which are more ornate than the simple gold hoops worn by her counterpart. These elements would seem to suggest that the more typical boundaries imposed by race - as indicated, for example, in several later American portraits where a child of colour is shown apart from the rest of the family group - do not apply here.[6]

Several possible locations have been suggested for where this portrait may have been painted. In style and format, the present work demonstrates the influence of English painting traditions as exemplified by Northwestern American portraitists of the Federal era, led by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) and his family. In contrast to child portraiture in England at this date, however, which was often romanticised and artistically contrived, these two young sitters are notably un-idealised. Although simplified in technique by comparison to mainstream English and European painting of the period, both girls are rendered with refreshing and unaffected clarity in drawing, colouring and compositional detail, benefiting from the greater directness and literalism of American school portraiture.

The earlier Federal era painters had a lasting impact on artists in the Boston and Philadelphia areas, one such painter being Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822), nephew of Charles Willson Peale, who, like the present artist, favoured brightly coloured highlights in his drapery. There is indeed a stylistic familiarity between Portrait of Two Girls and Polk’s portraits of Isaac Hite (1799) and of his wife and son Eleanor and James (1799).[7] The artist of the present work – who as one scholar has noted, chose a seemingly patriotic palette of red, white, and blue – belongs to the following generation and is likely to have been one of the many itinerant painters who travelled around North America undertaking portraits and possibly other work on commission.[8] It is known that many such painters travelled to the northeast coast during the summer months[9] which may also explain the inclusion of the rosebud held by the young girl which can be identified as a Rosa centifolia muscosa, or moss rose,[10] a quirky old garden rose which was originally imported from the Netherlands and which flowered between June and July. Likewise, Corallium rubrum, or red coral, was harvested in the Mediterranean and may hint at the proximity to an international commercial port on the Atlantic coast.

Louisiana could be other possible locations of origin. A small number of interracial portraits are thought to have been painted in New Orleans, for example, which was particularly multi-cultural with a large influx of immigrants, including many people from the West-Indies, following the War of 1812.[11] The island of Jamaica could be a further possible place of production, although one which seems less likely. Records of American painters working on the island are scarce, and no comparative examples have come to light, nor from any other Caribbean location.

The portrait’s twentieth century history is of note. John Judkyn and Dallas Pratt were founders of the American Museum in Britain (now known as the American Museum and Gardens). They met while studying in England in 1937 and remained lifelong companions. Pratt was the grandson of the steel magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840-1909) and used his inheritance to assemble an impressive collection of rare objects, ranging from manuscripts to maps and paintings. Judkyn himself was a successful art dealer, and assisted Pratt in the creation of a museum collection in 1961 with the noble aim to ‘share with the British the aesthetic charm of early American furniture and decorative arts and their historical background’.[12] This art collection, housed in Claverton Manor, Bath, comprises fine specimens of American Folk Art, and in particular, about forty folk art paintings from the early nineteenth century.

Judkyn and Pratt began collecting Americana and Folk Art in the early 1940s; their first piece was acquired at auction in New York in October 1942 and depicted a train pulling into the station of Ashoken.[13] The partners were also collecting pieces in Quaker and post-revolutionary Pennsylvania, where they both resided for a period of time.[14] The present work was probably acquired between the late 1940s and the early 1950s at a time when there was a wave of interest in and reappraisal of American Folk Art. The most fervent areas of artistic production were New England and Pennsylvania, which were centres of craftsmanship up to the early Republican period. This is where the bulk of the objects for the early twenty century Folk Art exhibitions were collected, and this is most likely where Judkyn and Pratt acquired the present portrait. For many years the portrait hung in their impressive residence on 228 East 49th Street, New York, where it was first recorded in a household inventory in 1955 with a stated value of $75.00.[15] It was recorded in several further inventories[16] up until 1989, by which point it was described as ‘Unknown Caribbean Primitive Painter, Two Children, 19th cen., oil on canvas, 22 ½’’ x 19’’. $2,000.00’.[17]

Following Pratt’s death in 1994 the present work was consigned to auction and the following year it was sold through Sotheby’s where it was acquired by the previous owner. While in their possession the portrait was not publicly exhibited and therefore overlooked and omitted from every important publication and study program. Following its re-emergence in 2023, the importance of this work can be more fully appreciated, and its position within the field of Black studies better understood.

[1] We are grateful to the following scholars for their assistance when writing this catalogue note: David Bindman, Theresa Leininger-Miller, Tim Barringer, Julie Aronson, Laura Addison, Emelie Gevalt, William Keyse Rudolph, Laura E. Wasowicz, and Deborah M. Child.

[2] Welch, D.A., A Bibliography of American Children’s Books Printed Prior to 1821, American Antiquarian Society, 1972, p. xxvi.

[3] Ibid., p. xxxiii.

[4] This was especially true in Massachusetts where the pioneer publisher Isaiah Thomas set up a highly successful printing press.

[5] Another example of a sitter of colour resting their hand on the shoulder of white sitter exists in a portrait of a young woman with her servant by Stephen Slaughter (1697-1765) (early 1700s, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut), however, her subservient role is clearly emphasised as she picks fruit to then hand to her seated mistress.

[6] See for example the group portrait attributed to Jacques Guillaume Lucein Amans, Bélizaire and the Frey Children (ca. 1837, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

[7] Both works are in the collection of Bell Grove Plantation.

[8] We are grateful to Theresa Leininger-Miller, Professor of Art History, University of Cincinnati for sharing her thoughts on this point.

[9] Rubin, C.E., ed. by, Southern Folk Art, Oxmoor House, Alabama, 1985, p. 41.

[10] For a print of the Rosa muscosa please see https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-1403-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

[11] See portrait Asher Moses Nathan and Son by Jules Lion (c. 1845, The Historic New Orleans Collection)

[12] Beresford, L., Folk Art from the American Museum in Britain, Scala, 2011, p. 7.

[13] Chapman, D., Dallas Pratt. A Patchwork Biography, Mark Agent, Cambridge, 2004, p. 115. American Folk Art experienced a wave of interest and appraisal starting from 1920s because of “the similarities in the use of exuberant colour and abstract design” with modern art – the idea of folk art as “proto-abstraction”. Two of the earliest exhibitions were held at the New York’s Whitney Museum of Art (1924) and the Museum of Modern Art (1932). An exhibition on “Children’s art, their portraits and their toys” was organised by The Downtown Gallery, New York, in the spring of 1937 and included 17 portraits of children in oil. See Beresford, pp. 7-10 and Children in American Folk Art 1725-1865, The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1937.

[14] Judkyn and Pratt purchased a property in Donningtown (PA) “in the heart of American Quakerdom”. They called it Brandywine Farm after the Battle of Brandywine, fought between the American army led by George Washington and the British Army in 1777 as part of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). See CHAPMAN, p. 115.

[15] Fine Arts Insurance Inventory for Francis C. Carr & Co., ‘Painting of two little girls, one a Negro. $75.00” (May 1955), p. 7. American Museum in Britain Archive, Dallas Pratt Papers, Art Collection DP/3.

[16] For this and further inventories from 1957, 1967, and 1979, see American Museum in Britain Archive, Dallas Pratt Papers.

[17] Fine Art Schedule as of May 28, 1989 as part of the Nordstern 1989 policy, 228 East 49th Street, New York, cat. n. 13, p. 1. American Museum in Britain Archive, Dallas Pratt Papers, Art Collection DP/3-21.