Update Our ticketing, donations, and membership sales portal is down for scheduled maintenance on the afternoon of 4/11.
Half-length portrait of a seated woman, Diantha Atwood Gordon (1809-1895), with brown hair and blue dress, holding an orange; on unprepared almost square panel, now split; details in gold leaf; plain stained blonde wood frame, contemporary.
portraits
paintings (visual works)
pencils (drawing and writing equipment)
wood (plant material)
gilding
painting (image-making)
Painting
Diantha Atwood Gordon was born in Fairfield, Maine, and married Washington Gordon, also of Fairfield, in 1828. Many years later, Diantha Gordon's great-granddaughter informed Nina Little that her mother had found her grandparents so disagreeable that she once locked them in an outhouse, where they were not discovered until evening. The style of this portrait, with its flat planes of color, seemed to foreshadow early twentieth-century modern art and delighted lovers of folk art.
Gordon, Diantha (Atwood), 1809-1895
Original to Cogswell's Grant (Essex, Mass.),
Attributed to Ellis, A. (Maker)
25 x 21 1/2 x 1/2 (HxWxD) (inches)
Gift of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little
1991.433
Maine (United States)
Fairfield (Somerset county, Maine)
Title Painting Accession Number 1991.1070
Title Painting Accession Number 1991.1071
Historic New England is committed to implementing reparative language description for existing collections and creating respectful and inclusive language description for new collections. If you encounter language in Historic England's Collections Access Portal that is harmful or offensive, or you find materials that would benefit from a content warning, please contact [email protected].
Sign up to our newsletter for our latest news and events
