Thomas Le Clear's work, Interior with Portraits, shows two figures having portraits taken in two forms, photography and painting.Posing for a picture during the early days of photography—when exposure times required several minute—was no small feat.
Double Portrait, Times Two
Thomas Le Clear's work, Interior with Portraits, shows two figures having portraits taken in two forms, photography and painting.Posing for a picture during the early days of photography—when exposure times required several minute—was no small feat.
A sister and brother stand motionless against a landscape backdrop in a photographer's studio. Its clutter includes paintings and a marble bust, references to time-honored ways of capturing likenesses. Clothing resting on the chairs suggests that the children's parents are nearby, watching, just as we do, from outside the canvas.
They—and we—enjoy a visual joke, as the new art of photography and the established tradition of portraiture vie for prominence.
Find out more about Le Clear and his engaging portrait by taking a virtual tour with Elizabeth Broun, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Source: Gwen Everett. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
Pictured: Thomas Le Clear, 1818–82, Interior with Portraits, about 1865, oil, 25 7/8 x 40 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Pauline Edwards Bequest.