John F. Francis (1808–1886)

JOHN F. FRANCIS (1808–1886)
Portrait of Mrs. Levi Oberholtzer (1836–1923), 1859
Oil on canvas, 36 5/16 x 29 1/4 in. 
Signed, dated, and inscribed (on the back, before lining): Jno F Francis / Pinxit / June, 1859

RECORDED: “High Style,” Time (May 25, 1970), p. 83 illus. as hanging in the Belter Parlor // Marvin D. Schwartz, “Nineteenth-century American Rooms at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Antiques XCVIII (September 1970), pl.111

EXHIBITED: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970, 19th Century America [not in cat.], hung in the Belter Parlor // Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1972, 18th & 19th Century American Paintings from Private Collections // Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 1984, 25th Anniversary Exhibition: Selected American Paintings, 1750–1950, p. 6 no. 45, 27 plate 14 illus.

EX COLL.: the sitters, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; to their son, Herman Oberholtzer, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; [Argosy Gallery, New York, until 1969]; to private collection, New York, until 1983; to [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1983–86]; to Shearson-Lehman Brothers, New York

Dr. Oberholtzer married Angeline Vanderslice (1836–1923), also of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, in 1856. Mrs. Oberholtzer attended a finishing school in Norristown, Pennsylvania; she graduated from Lewisburg Seminary, now Bucknell College.

Of all Francis’s works in the portrait genre, the likenesses of Dr. and Mrs. Levi Oberholtzer are his most elaborate and most ambitious.