Townsend Bradley Martin
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Grosvenor Backus
Accession Number
1950.11.14
Tags
child
About this artwork
Townsend Bradley Martin was the grandson of Henry Phipps, the business partner of steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In this portrait sketch of the young boy in a garden, Townsendâs shirt nearly disappears in the foliage. Abbott Thayer was fascinated with natural history, and he developed a theory of natural camouflage that is obvious in his paintings of animals but often creeps into his portraits as well. (Nemerov, âVanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and ...