Mrs. Edward Kellogg 1831 - 1832

Samuel Lovett Waldo painted this oil on canvas portrait of Mrs. Edward Kellogg sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Waldo was known as a portrait painter who mostly served the merchant elite of New York. This is a work of the American Federal style. It presents its sitter as a respectable and refined member of society. With her lace bonnet and expensive book, Mrs. Kellogg is represented as a pious woman of leisure. The dark palette and posed formality speak to the more conservative impulses in American society at the time. Portraiture served to reinforce the social hierarchy and celebrate the virtues of the ruling class. The image is not overtly political, but as a cultural historian, I see it as a document of its time. Research into Waldo’s professional life and the Kellogg family would reveal much about the social and institutional context that shaped the painting.