Interior+With+Portraits

Date:. 1865
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1993/1993.6_1a.jpg?itok=WZ1ClDYP width="414" height="266" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/interior-portraits-33492"]] || Title: **Interior with Portraits**

Artist: **Thomas Le Clear** Born: Oswego, New York 1818 Died: Rutherford Park, New Jersey 1882

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 7/8 x 40 1/2 in. (65.7 x 102.9 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase made possible by the Pauline Edwards Bequest

Accession: 1993.6 || Posing for a picture during the early days of photography—when exposure times required several minutes—was no small feat. A sister and brother stand motionless against a landscape backdrop in a photographer's studio. Its clutter includes paintings and a marble bust, references to time-honored ways of capturing likenesses. Clothing resting on the chairs suggests that the children's parents are nearby, watching, just as we do, from outside the canvas. They—and we—enjoy a visual joke, as the new art of photography and the established tradition of portraiture vie for prominence.
 * Exhibition Label: **

The painting shows Parnell St. John Sidway (1836-1849) with her younger brother James Henry Sidway (1839-1865) as they appeared around the year 1844. Both children are in their "Sunday best" standing before a painted landscape backdrop as a photographer prepares to take their picture. The girl died at age thirteen of a childhood disease (possibly cholera) and the boy at age twenty-six. He was a firefighter who died in a hotel fire on a stormy winter night (much like the backdrop in this painting). Their parents commissioned this painting as a memorial to the children.

Most viewers today think the little boy in the picture looks definitely dead, even stuffed. One possibility is that the painter, for lack of live models to get likenesses, used a daguerreotype of them as a substitute so he could get the features right. A daguerreotype was an early form of photography. Unlike the fast cameras of today, it may have taken 90 seconds to take the picture of the boy. It was difficult for a young child to hold still for that long and the poses look stiff and unsmiling.


 * Suggested Questions: **
 * What is going on in this picture?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Where is this scene taking place?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">What is happening around the children? Who might have been sitting in the chair with a hat, cane, and a newspaper?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Based on clues like their clothing, posture, and expressions, what do you think life was like for these children?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Why might the children be having their photograph taken? Why have you had yours taken? How is this similar or different from your experiences?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">//Interior With Portraits// in Western NY Heritage Magazine
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Young America (Treasures Book) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Director's Choice <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Speaking of Pictures <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Details: **
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1993/1993.6_2a.jpg?itok=VQ5MZnKS width="266" height="228"]] ||
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1993/1993.6_4a.jpg?itok=jecX53GG width="263" height="245"]] ||
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1993/1993.6_3a.jpg?itok=4oRVMyDc width="267" height="227"]] ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **