John Antrobus 1885 Children's Double Portrait Oil Painting

Item Details

John Antrobus(American, 1837-1907)
Untitled (portrait of two children), 1885
Oil painting on canvas
Signed “Antrobus” to lower left

An 1885 oil painting on canvas signed ‘Antrobus’ in red pigment to the lower left. This work depicts a portrait of two young children posed in nature, one of them reclining along a sturdy tree root while the other affectionately leans into the shoulder of their sibling. This work is presented without framing.

Born in England, John Antrobus was an itinerant portrait, landscape, and genre painter and also a poet and journalist. He was the first artist to paint a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant and designed the Grant medal authorized by Congress in 1863.

He arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1850, and three years later was living in Savannah, Georgia. In 1855-56, he painted portraits in Montgomery, Alabama, and then traveled through the American West and Mexico. In 1859, he opened a studio in New Orleans and completed two large panoramic paintings depicting southern life and culture and also married in New Orleans. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Antrobus was a commissioned lieutenant in the Delhi Southrons and departed for Virginia in July 1861. He soon left the Confederate Army, however, and was living in Chicago by 1862. Antobus spent some years in Chicago and Washington, DC, before finally settling in Detroit (c.1875), where he became the city’s leading portrait and landscape painter and a frequent contributor to the local newspapers.

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Condition

- light scattered abrasions and frame abrasion; areas of craquelure; impact cracking to painting along top and right edges; void to canvas 12.5" inward from upper left corner; tears to canvas located underneath void and near lower left corner; scattered areas of loss to painting which are heaviest at lower right corner and along the right edge; slight warp to canvas at lower right corner; accretions to surface of canvas verso.

Dimensions

Item #

ITMG194281