Interior with Portraits

Interior with Portraits
Two children pose for a photograph in an artist's studio.
ArtistThomas Le Clear
Year1865 (1865)
MediumOil on canvas
ConditionOn display
LocationSmithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC

Interior with Portraits is an 1865 genre scene painted by American artist Thomas Le Clear (1818–1882), commissioned by Franklin Sidway (1834–1920). It features Sidway's siblings, James and Parnell, posing for a photograph in an artist's studio. The children were painted posthumously based on family daguerreotypes, and the painting has been read as representing the tension between its medium and the emergent medium of photography. Interior with Portraits is currently held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.