MARGARET SARAH CARPENTER (Salisbury 1793 – London 1872)
A Mother and Child with a White Dog in an Interior
oil on canvas
42 ½ x 34 inches (108 x 86.3 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Bromley Collection, and thus by descent in the family until
Estate of Albert H. Bromley, Centreville, Delaware, 1998, from where acquired by
Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York, where sold to
Private Collection, New Jersey, 1998, until the present time
Margaret Carpenter was a painter of portraits and figure subjects. She was born Margaret Geddes in Salisbury. Her first art studies were made from pictures at Longford Castle, belonging to Lord Randor. She came to London in 1814, and soon established her reputation as a fashionable portrait painter. She exhibited at The Royal Academy from 1818 until 1866, as well as the British Institution and the Society of British Artists.
In 1817 she married William H. Carpenter, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.
Her portraits follow the tradition of Sir Thomas Lawrence but have a more fanciful and feminine character which is particularly noticeable in her portraits of children. In this painting the charming detail of the child wearing only one shoe and sock represents the transition from infancy to toddlerhood. Three other works are in the National Gallery of London, as well as in the collection in Eton College.