Girl of the Bangs-Phelps Family

Erastus Salisbury Field

ca. 1848 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Over a fifty-year career that included early training with Samuel F. B. Morse, Field became one of the most successful itinerant painters in antebellum New England and New York State. He developed a repertoire of compositional formulas to depict the features and surroundings of his sitters, who belonged to the emerging rural middle class. Field’s portrait of a female member of the Bangs-Phelps family of Springfield, Massachusetts, presents her wearing an oversized, nicely detailed costume and holding a book in her right hand. The background is a soft gray color, with Field’s distinctive shaded halo of space encircling the skillfully modeled face and sharply parted hair.

Artist

Erastus Salisbury Field

Date

ca. 1848

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1963