Unknown artist
Oil on canvas
Gift of Barbara Courtemanche and Family, 2015.7.001
The Five Angels. Artist unknown, oil on canvas. Gift of Barbara Courtemache and Family, 2015.7.001.
The Five Angels on display on the far right, in Amelia's Jones's front parlor, c. 1906. RJD Collections. An earlier photograph in the collections of the New Bedford Whaling Museum depicts the painting in its current location, positioned to the right of the front windows.
The Five Angels was painted in the style of Sir Joshua Reynolds by an unknown artist. A photograph of the front parlor from 1906 shows the painting on the far right, near the hallway door. When Mathilde Lindgren, cook for the Jones family retired, Amelia gave her the painting. Her niece Barbara brought the painting back to the RJD in 2015. Barbara remembered Amelia taking her into the kitchen to get cookies from Mathilde.
What remains of the label on the back of the painting reads: " Heads of Angels after Sir Joshua Reynolds / The original picture was painted order Frances Isabella, daughter of Lord William Gordon, exhibited..." The original painting by Reynolds is on display in the Tate Gallery, London, England and is titled A Child's Portrait in Different Views: Angel's Heads. It shows five studies of Lady Frances Isabella Keir Gordon, age five, daughter of Frances Ingram and Lord William Gordon. This painting is a copy, artist unknown, on its original canvas and in the original late-19th century carved wood frame.
Reynolds, Joshua. A Child's Portrait in Different Views: 'Angel's Heads'. 1786–7, oil on canvas, Photo © Tate Gallery, London. CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)