CHARLES BIRD KING, AMERICAN, NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, D.C. 1785-1862, DAINGERFIELD CHILDREN OF ALEXANDRIA: MARY HELEN (1842-1875); WILLIAM BATHURST (1845-1917); EDWARD LONSDALE (1847-1925), 1853, Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 1/4

CHARLES BIRD KING
AMERICAN, NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1785-1862
DAINGERFIELD CHILDREN OF ALEXANDRIA: MARY HELEN (1842-1875); WILLIAM BATHURST (1845-1917); EDWARD LONSDALE (1847-1925), 1853
Oil on canvas
Catalogue note:
Following the lead of his fellow artists working in early America, [Charles Bird] King specialized in portraiture. He studied under Edward Savage in New York, then with Benjamin West in London. He returned to America in 1812 and worked in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. In 1818 he settled permanently in the nation's capital. There he painted portraits of many prominent figures, including John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun, Henry Clay, James Monroe, and Daniel Webster.

Charles Bird King also painted a portrait of Alexandria's Ann Caroline Dennis (nee Fowle) (1823-1844), who, along with the Daingerfield children, were descendants of prominent Alexandrian William Fowle (1783-1860) of The Patton-Fowle House, 711 Prince Street, Alexandria. The portrait of Ann Caroline Dennis was sold by the Potomack Company in 2018. The year before, Potomack also sold a notable 1860 painting of Alexandria, "Bridge Over Hunting Creek," commissioned by William Fowle or his married daughter Harriet Fowle Taylor.

Mary Helen Daingerfield lived for a time in Alexandria's Lyceum, which her father, John Bathurst Daingerfield (1815-1886), bought and remodeled for her as a wedding gift in 1868.

All three of the subjects in the "Daingerfield Children" are buried in Alexandria: Mary Helen and William Bathurst in Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery and Edward Lonsdale in Presbyterian Cemetery.

Source: William Truettner, ed The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920 (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) (via: americanart.si.edu/artist/charles-bird-king-2628)

Provenance: Daingerfield Family by 1853 and by descent to the present owner Dimensions: 29 x 24 1/4 in. (73.7 x 61.6 cm.), Frame: 50 1/2 x 34 in. (128.3 x 86.4 cm.) Artist Name: CHARLES BIRD KING Literature:
"Our town: 1749-1865; likenesses of this place & its people taken from life," Alexandria, VA: Alexandria Association, 1956.
Cuthbert Lee, Portrait Register, Volume I, 1968; as "Daingerfield Children"
Cosentino, Andrew J., "The paintings of Charles Bird King (1785-1862)," Washington: Published for the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977, no. 61.
Sirus #IAP 81870165 Medium: Oil on canvas

Condition: For a detailed condition report please request more information.