James Brade Sword Portrait Oil Painting, 1874

Item Details

James Brade Sword (American, 1839 – 1915)
Untitled (portrait of a woman), 1874
Oil painting on canvas
Unsigned
Inscribed to the verso “Painted by J.B. Sword Jan’y 1874”
Artists’ supply stencil to canvas verso appears to read “C.P. Staar & Co New York”

Born in Pennsylvania, James Brade Sword spent his early childhood in Macao, China, where his father was a tea and silk trader. He returned to Philadelphia for high school, working as a civil engineer and and a silverplate manufacturer while training as an artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He established himself professionally as an artist of portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes in the Hudson River style. He trained at His work is held at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Yale Art Gallery, among others; his 1911 portrait of House Speaker John Winston Jones hangs in the U.S Capitol building.

Condition

- yellowed discoloration to varnish of painting; stretcher marks to canvas; craquelure throughout with evidence of prior consolidation during restoration; heavy overpainting present throughout background and in hair at the woman’s temples, with lesser overpainting indicated under UV light in cheeks, nose, and chin of face; chips, scratches, and edge wear to frame; discoloration and accretion to canvas verso with craquelure showing through.

Dimensions

- measures frame; visible image measures 11.25" W x 13.25" H.

Item #

ITMG418520