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Man with a Pen

Jonas Welch Holman (American, 1805–1873)

1827–30

Medium: Oil on yellow poplar panel
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: 70.8 × 54.6 cm (27 7/8 × 21 1/2 in.)
Culture: Philadelphia
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
Credit line: Gift of Robert Allerton
Rights: Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

About this work

Jonas Holman worked as a portrait painter, writer, doctor, and preacher, supporting himself through these vocations as he traveled among Baptist congregations. By 1827 he had made his way to Philadelphia where he painted seven known portraits, among them Woman with a Book and Man with a Pen. In these works Holman substituted a brilliant, tasseled curtain for a plain background. He showed his sitters in painted "fancy" chairs, with broad, Greek Revival crest rails, similar to painted furniture made in Philadelphia or Baltimore. Like Ammi Phillips, Holman used props that pointed to the sitters' erudition; he also concentrated on the details of his sitters' costumes, showing women with rings and earrings and men with stickpins fastened to cravats.