Documenting United States History

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
196 ChApTEr 8 | the MarKet reVoLution | period Four 180 0 –1848

Document 8.4 JOSEPH H. DAvIS, Family Portraits
1832–1837

Joseph H. Davis (1811–1865) painted portraits for middle-class families to display in their
homes. He traveled throughout New England and made a modest living as a painter,
creating watercolor portraits of families and married couples that featured their favorite
household items and articles of clothing.

image copyright © the Metropolitan Museum of

art.

image source:

art

resource,

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Y.

the

azariah Caverly Family, 1836, attributed to Joseph

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.

Davis,

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0061.1961. Gift of stephen C. Clark, Fenimore

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rt

Museum, Cooperstown,

n
ew York.

prACTICINg historical Thinking


Identify: What details do Davis’s paintings share?
Analyze: In what ways do these images portray the roles that were played by men
and women in the middle-class households of this era?
Evaluate: What objects in these portraits define those roles? In what ways are these
objects a product of the economic changes represented in Docs. 8.1–8.3?

09_STA_2012_ch8_191-212.indd 196 15/04/15 10:09 AM


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