Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Portrait of a Woman
Jacob Eichholtz (born Lancaster, PA 1776-died Lancaster, PA 1842)
ca. 1809
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 10 x 7 3/4 in. (25.3 x 19.8 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mary L. Schaff
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), 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
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman were painted to hang as a pair, the two sitters facing one another as husband and wife. The profile was a common portrait style in America’s first decades, and these paintings show the softer line and naturalistic modeling that Jacob Eichholtz favored in his later profile portraits. Eichholtz was a savvy businessman. He ran a smithing business and charged the same amount for framed portraits as he did for copper teakettles or lanterns, making the portraits as affordable as other essential household items. From 1801 until 1811, he produced many profiles and sold them for such a fair price that he became the leading portraitist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Ryan, The Worlds of Jacob Eichholtz: Portrait Painter of the Early Republic, 2003).
