Figure 1.--Lambdin painted 'The Biddle Children On The Schuylkill' in 1869, a few years after the Civil War. The Schuylkill is an important river running west to east in eastern Pennsylvania through Phildelphia, which formed the basis for the Schuylkill Canal, imporant in the early industrialization of the North. We do not know who the Biddle children were. We do know that the Biddles were a prominent Philadelphia family. The most famous family member was financeer Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844), the last president of the Second Bank of the United States. We are not sure about the relationship. Lambdin's painting seems to be a conbination of genre and portrait painting. We have a good depiction of period childhood. Children this age would not be allowed to go fishing on their own today. Notice that the girl is not fishing, only her brothers. We also have a depiction of how children were dressed for everyday activities and not dressed up for a studio portrait. The girl wears a Federal Army kepi. This suggests that the Biddle family was an ardent supporter of President Lincoln and the Union cause. One might have thought the boys would have been wearing kepis, but instead they wear straw hats, at least for a summer fishing outing.

George Cochran Lambdin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1830), but grew up and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. His father, James Reid Lambdin, was a well-established portrait painter and taught his son paint. He traveled to Europe and studied in Munich and Paris (1855-57). George began his career following his fathers example as a portrait painter in his early-20s. He shortly soon began to paint genre paintings, often sentimentl scenes of women and children. He worked with the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. He brought medicines and bandages to Federal troops in the field. Based on that work, he painted genre scenes of military camp life as well as domestic scenes that with soldiers present. One of his best genre portraits on children was, 'The Biddle Children On The Schuylkill', painted in 1869. Of course fishing, a quientsential 19th century boy activitiy as a virtual must for a genre painter focusing on children in the 19th century. Notice only the boys are fishing. Lamnbdin exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy and the National Academy of Design. In mid-life his health began to fail and many of his last painyings were still art works of flowers, especially roses, for which he became well known. Philadelphia was known as the City of Flowers. He was one of the most popular American artists of the second half of the 19th century. Quite a number of his paintings were copied as chromolithographs--mening color lithography. This allowed for mass-production and sale to the public. This led to great popularity.

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Created: 11:45 AM 8/2/2017
Last updated: 11:46 AM 8/2/2017