JOSEPH GOODHUE CHANDLER (MA/NY, 1813-1884)

Charming Life-Sized Portrait of Four Upper Class Connecticut Valley Siblings, oil on canvas, unsigned (Chandler signed the back of his canvases, this is relined), active in the Connecticut River Valley and Northwest Massachusetts as an itinerant artist 1837-52, this work from early in that period, judging by costume. Depicted are three sisters (one a toddler seated on a floral cloth) and a brother seated in a fancy garden pergola, all gazing directly at the viewer, a distant open gate to the left, the toddler filling a basket of grapes from a vine the boy is holding, the middle sister with a basket of red English roses. Housed in what is probably the original large water gilt molded cove frame, OS: 68" x 87", SS: 52 1/2" x 71 1/2". Relined, craquelure.