Lot 2011: Attributed to James Reid Lambdin American, 1807-1889 Portrait of Polly Stuart Webb Vincent

Attributed to James Reid Lambdin
American, 1807-1889
Portrait of Polly Stuart Webb Vincent
Watercolor and gouache on ivory
Oval, height 3 3/8 inches

Provenance:
Kende Gallery, New York, 1949

George Cochran Lambdin, best known for his floral and genre subjects, has traditionally been identified as the author of the present work. While he did paint portraits as well, he is not known as a miniature painter. The present work may instead be the work of his father, James Read Lambdin, a noted portrait and miniature painter. The student in Philadelphia of the miniature painter Edward Miles (1752-1828) as well as Thomas Sully, James Reid Lambdin worked in Pittsburgh, Mobile, and Kentucky. He settled permanently in Philadelphia in 1837 and became known for his portraits of prominent individuals. For nearly twenty years he served as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Two miniature portraits were made of Polly Stuart Webb Vincent at roughly the same period. In 1921, Theodore Bolton listed five works by Lambdin in Early American Portrait Painters in Miniature [Published by F. F. Sherman, 1921, p. 94]. One of these was identified as a portrait of Polly Stuart Webb Vincent, measuring 2 3/8 x 1 13/16 inches and inscribed on the back as having been painted by J. R. Lambdin in New York in December 1850. That work, then owned by John Hill Morgan, is now included in the permanent collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (acc. 1940.506.). The miniature depicts the same lovely young woman portrayed in the present work, her hair similarly styled and her attire roughly contemporary with the wine-colored dress seen here, fashionable around the time the paintings were made.