Winthrop Chandler

WINTHROP CHANDLER (1747-1790)

He was one of ten children of William Chandler, a farmer, and Jemima Bradbury Chandler of Woodstock. Few details of Chandler’s life remain. After the death of his father in 1754 and on reaching the age for apprenticeship, Chandler pursued a career as a portrait and ornamental painter. Chandler worked in such diverse trades as gilding, carving and illustrating, as well as portraiture, landscape and house painting, suggesting that he received some instruction as an artisan-painter. He is best known for some 50 portraits.

Chandler was an itinerant and impecunious painter of the Revolutionary period. Unlike most limners, Chandler did not travel through the countryside looking for commissions. All his paintings that have been identified were originally either by one of the artist’s relatives or a family friend. He was never financially successful as a painter and continually needed to borrow from his relatives. Little theorized that some of his portraits were payment for these debts because none of his sitters’ estates contained a reference to the price paid for a painting. In 1785, Chandler moved to Worcester in an unsuccessful attempt to improve his livelihood. He sold parts of his land on Chandler Hill to the members of his family. In 1790 he returned to Woodstock, he was totally insolvent. In 1790 he died.

Chandler adhered to a flat, linear manner of painting and realistic depictions of his subjects throughout his career. His style represented the work of a highly gifted folk painter. Built directly out of the people and surroundings he knew, his pictures showed little or no trace of outside influences. Everything was absolutely solid and tangible, down to the brass tacks in the upholstery. Faces, bodies and hands had a rocklike strength of character. Powerful outlines defined every shape with complete precision. The queer contorted forms were filled with inner energy. Out of those uncompromising elements Chandler produced overall design of stunning impact and handsomeness.

In 1770 he began to paint portraits of the Devotion family. A Portrait Of Jonathan Devotion is one of them (1772).

(1780-1785) Chandler’s portrait of his brother-in-law is one of the most fascinating depictions of an American physician. Glysson is sitting upright holding his walking stick in his right hand while taking the pulse of an unseen patient. The picture of the impressive physician and the concealed patient allows one to consider the significant changes that have taken place in the doctor-patient relationship over past 200 years.

Captain Samuel Chandler Musem: National Gallery of Art

John Paine Musem: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Mrs Samuel Chandler Musem: National Gallery of Art

The Battle of Bunker Hill Musem: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A Landscape With Trees, Red And Yellow Houses On A Lake , Hound Pursuing A Red Fox Original 1780

View Of A River With Trees And Figures

Riverside Cottage At Sunset

The Homestead of General Timothy Ruggles, Hardwick, Massachusetts, circa 1770-1775, Worcester Art Museum