Artwork
Mary and Francis Wilcox
Mary and Francis Wilcox is an oil painting by the American Folk Art artist Joseph Whiting Stock. It dates from 1845 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
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About this work
Subject & Meaning
The work titled "Mary and Francis Wilcox" is a double portrait that presents the two children of the Wilcox family side by side. As an 1845 oil on canvas painting, it serves as a formal commemoration of sibling relationships within a New England household. The composition, typical of mid‑19th‑century American portraiture, emphasizes familial connection and the social status of the subjects.
Technique & Style
The figures are modeled with subtle chiaroscuro, while the background remains flat and unmodulated, emphasizing the sitters’ faces and hands as focal points.
Joseph Whiting Stock’s Mary and Francis Wilcox (1845) is executed in oil paint on a canvas support measuring 122 × 101.6 cm. The medium’s slow drying time allowed Stock to build smooth, enamel-like surfaces characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century American portraiture. Brushwork is meticulously controlled, with fine glazes defining the children’s flesh tones and crisp, linear detailing in lace collars and ribbon trim.
Stylistically, the double portrait adheres to the conventions of antebellum bourgeois likenesses: symmetrical composition, frontal poses, and a restrained palette dominated by earth tones and cool blues. The figures are modeled with subtle chiaroscuro, while the background remains flat and unmodulated, emphasizing the sitters’ faces and hands as focal points.
History & Provenance
The double portrait Mary and Francis Wilcox was painted in 1845 by Joseph Whiting Stock and was in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Philo Franklin Wilcox of Springfield, Massachusetts by that year. It remained in the Wilcox family, passing by inheritance to their son Frank P. Wilcox and then to his daughter Theresa Wilcox Powers, who still owned it in 1949. In that year Theresa’s niece, Josephine Powers Clapp, inherited the work along with two related portraits; finding it too large for her Sarasota home, she sold it to Peter Kostoff of Springfield in 1949.
Kostoff resold the painting to Edgar and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch in 1953, who donated it to the National Gallery of Art in 1959.
No specific exhibition history or accession number for the National Gallery of Art is provided in the available records.
Overview
Joseph Whiting Stock completed the oil painting "Mary and Francis Wilcox" in 1845. This portrait features two young siblings, Mary and Francis, depicted standing side-by-side. The work serves as a record of the children, captured with details that reflect their age and the period. As an oil on canvas, it exemplifies a common medium for portraiture during the mid-19th century.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Joseph Whiting Stock (January 30, 1815 – 1855) was an American painter known for his portraits, miniatures, and landscape paintings, many of which he did on commission.
