Although initially trained as a cabinetmaker during his early youth in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Joseph Goodhue Chandler (1813 - 1884) soon changed careers to become a portrait painter. Studying with William Collins (1787 - 1847), an Albany portrait painter who is thought to have been working in South Hadley in 1827, Chandler's first known portraits were not executed until the late 1830s. At the time the portrait illustrated here was probably painted, Chandler was working as an itinerant artist in northwestern Massachusetts and was undoubtedly influenced by his wife, Lucretia Ann Waite (1820 - 1868), who was also a painter, and with whom he later collaborated. The couple subsequently moved to Boston, where they not only established a studio, but where Lucretia Waite Chandler's work was ultimately exhibited at the Boston Atheneum.

The portrait illustrated here employs characteristics features of Chandler's portraits of adults. These include a dark costume, red swagged curtain and small potted flowering plant reminiscent of the larger painterly and ebullient flowering plants associated with Chandler's portraits of children. For further information, see John W. Keefe, "Joseph Goodhue Chandler (1813 - 1884): Itinerant Painter of the Connecticut River Valley," The Magazine Antiques (November 1972) vol. 102, #5, pp. 848 - 853.