Currently not on view

Henrietta Dorr,

ca. 1814

Ammi Phillips, 1788–1865; born Colebrook, CT; died Curtisville, MA
y1958-66
Henrietta Dorr was about six when her father, Dr. Russell Dorr of Chatham, New York, commissioned itinerant artist Ammi Phillips to paint individual portraits of his family. Remarkably, all eight works survive, grouped in pairs of diminishing size by the sitters’ ages, with those of Henrietta and her youngest brother, Robert, being the smallest. Phillips rendered the Door family in what is known as his “Border” style, referring to a period from 1813–19 when the artist depicted residents from towns along the intersecting New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut state lines. Flat, starkly modeled, with simple compositions, these works are also delicate and fresh, contrasting markedly with Phillips’s later work in which a decorative and formulaic stylization predominates. One of several portraits by the artist in the Museum’s esteemed Balken collection of American Folk Art, Henrietta Dorr is both its most penetrating and its most endearing.

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Handbook Entry

Information

Title
Henrietta Dorr
Dates

ca. 1814

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
56 x 45 cm. (22 1/16 x 17 11/16 in.) frame: 64.7 × 54 × 5 cm (25 1/2 × 21 1/4 × 1 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Edward Duff Balken, Class of 1897
Object Number
y1958-66