The Vanderkemp Children

Three children gather around a portfolio in Thomas Sully’s The Vanderkemp Children . One looks outward, another turns toward her brother, and the youngest seems about to speak. Their overlapping hands and differently directed faces make the group feel occupied with a shared activity. Painted in 1832, the portrait belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which received it as a gift from Countess Mona Bismarck in 1966. ^[1]

The children are John Jacob Vanderkemp, Jr., at the left, Bertha Frances in the middle and Pauline Elizabeth at the right. Their identities and positions are important because an earlier exhibition catalogue reversed the order. The NGA’s systematic catalogue corrects that identification and provides evidence about the commission and changes beneath the visible background. ^[2]

Three children with three directions of attention

John stands at the left in a pale yellow dress. His mouth is open and his face turns toward the centre. Bertha, wearing orange, leans into the group behind him. Pauline occupies the right foreground, with one shoulder turned toward us and her head looking back. The three faces make a compact sequence across the top of the composition.

Their gazes do not form a neat, symmetrical pattern. John and Bertha appear engaged within the group, while Pauline acknowledges someone outside it. This gives the viewer a point of entry without making all three children pose in the same way. The resulting impression is of a short interval in an activity rather than a formal lineup.

The arrangement remains carefully controlled. Bertha’s head rises above the others, creating a shallow arch. Pauline’s dark clothing anchors the right, balanced by the portfolio spreading across the lower centre. John’s paler costume keeps the left side lighter and less densely enclosed. The sense of ease depends on these unequal shapes working together, rather than on an absence of design.

Identifying the sitters

The children were the son and daughters of John Jacob Vanderkemp and Eliza Hepburn Vanderkemp. The NGA catalogue identifies their father as a Philadelphia merchant and general agent for the Holland Land Company. It gives birth years of 1829 for John, 1827 for Bertha and 1826 for Pauline, establishing that the youngest child is the boy at the left. ^[2]

The differences between their clothing and positions can help a viewer remember the names, but the identifications come from documentary scholarship. John is in yellow; Bertha’s orange dress is visible centrally; Pauline wears the dark dress and holds the portfolio’s ribbons. Clothing alone should not be used to decide who each child must be.

Keeping the names straight also changes how we describe the activity. The youngest child approaches the portfolio from one side while the oldest handles its fastening from the other. Bertha connects them through her turned face and close position. What might initially look like three interchangeable examples of childhood becomes a particular arrangement of siblings, even though their private thoughts remain beyond the evidence.

The portfolio at the centre

The object at the bottom is an artist’s portfolio, not simply a large reading book. Its broad cover, loose ribbon fastening and position across the group make it an effective shared focus. Pauline holds a ribbon while John reaches toward its edge. The artist’s monogram and date, TS 1832, are placed on the portfolio itself. ^{[1] [2]}

This placement gives the signature a role within the painted world. Rather than floating separately in an empty corner, the letters belong to an object that already attracts attention. Following the hands toward the cover also brings the viewer toward the painter’s identifying mark. The portfolio therefore connects the children’s activity with Sully’s own presence as the maker of the image.

What it meant to the family is less certain. Scholars have proposed that drawings might have held the children’s attention during the sitting, or that the portfolio suggests cultivation and an interest in art. These are interpretations, not a surviving account of precisely what Sully gave the children to look at. ^[2] The closed and partly obscured contents leave the viewer in much the same position: we can see an interest being represented without inspecting its full object.

A documented commission in 1832

The NGA catalogue reports that Sully painted the portrait between 25 February and 3 May 1832 for a fee of one hundred and fifty dollars. It also records its exhibition that year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under the descriptive title Portraits of a Gentleman’s Three Children (grouped) . ^[2]

That early title foregrounded the format rather than the family name. It described what the painter had accomplished: three children brought together within one portrait. The modern title supplies the identity that the exhibition wording withheld, while the composition itself still demonstrates the challenge of giving each child a distinct position within a shared group.

The execution dates should not be confused with a record of continuous daily sittings. They establish a period of work, not the number of hours each child spent in front of Sully. His later manual discusses how portrait sittings could be organised, but those instructions do not provide a session log for this particular canvas. ^[11] The portrait belongs to the practical world of commissioned likenesses as well as to the affectionate scene it presents.

Colour and the appearance of informality

The three costumes provide a clear progression. Pale yellow at the left moves into warm orange at the centre and then into deep brown on the right. Across these larger shapes, the lighter faces and hands create smaller connections. The ribbon introduces a cooler blue-green note near the lower middle, separating the fastening from the dark portfolio cover.

Around the children, the painting becomes looser. The background contains cloudy transitions of grey, green and brown rather than a crisply described room. Lower contours also soften as they approach the edge. This means the faces, gestures and portfolio can remain the clearest information without being enclosed by a highly detailed setting.

The effect is especially noticeable when the painting is viewed as a whole. The children seem to emerge from the surrounding colour, with some edges more definite than others. That selective finish makes the close grouping feel less rigid. It should not be mistaken for proof that the portrait was painted in one rapid sitting: the impression of spontaneity is an artistic result, not a timetable.

An earlier outdoor setting beneath the paint

Technical examination gives the background a more complicated history. The NGA’s 1998 catalogue reports that infrared reflectography revealed an earlier arrangement of trees and foliage around the children. Sully subsequently converted that exterior setting into the more neutral background now visible. Areas that began as sky and cloud were reworked as wall and shadow. ^[2]

The catalogue also describes an abandoned landscape drawing with a figure along the bottom edge. It was detected through infrared examination but did not appear in X-radiography, leading the authors to place its abandonment early in the working process. This is evidence from examination beneath the visible surface, rather than a feature a reader should expect to find in an ordinary colour photograph. ^[2]

These findings help explain why the apparently simple setting deserves attention. The finished portrait did not merely acquire an empty backdrop by default: a more specific environment was replaced. The surviving arrangement concentrates attention on the children and their shared object. The examination does not, however, establish Sully’s reason for every alteration, so an imagined dissatisfied patron or restless sitting would add a story the evidence does not provide.

Comparing The Coleman Sisters

Sully returned to a three-sitter family group in The Coleman Sisters , painted in 1844. That canvas places three older sisters in a more upright arrangement, with a red book and flowers near the lower right. Looking at the two pictures together shows how much the format can change even when the number of sitters remains the same. ^[12]

The Vanderkemp group is wider and more compressed. Its hands converge around one object, and its faces occupy a closely connected arc. In the Coleman portrait, the costumes extend farther downward and the heads descend across the composition. Both pictures use differences in gaze to connect the sitters while allowing some of them to address the viewer.

The comparison need not become a contest over which family appears more affectionate. A painted arrangement cannot measure the actual warmth of sibling relationships. It can show how Sully gave those relationships different visible forms: here through a shared portfolio and close cluster, elsewhere through the more spacious presentation of three individual figures. Further examples appear in the overview of Sully’s portraits .

Collection history and the limits of the record

The painting’s known later history includes the Ehrich Galleries in New York and the collection of Countess Mona Bismarck. Her gift brought it to the NGA in 1966. The museum’s current provenance also preserves an unresolved label naming Mrs. B. M. Liddell, whose identity has not been established. ^[1]

That gap should remain visible rather than being filled with an assumed inheritance. A record can identify the sitters securely while leaving part of the object’s subsequent ownership uncertain. The current accession, 1966.11.1, gives a stable way to distinguish this canvas from other portraits, later reproductions and general references to the Vanderkemp family.

The picture rewards a final return to its smallest actions. Pauline’s turn brings the viewer into the group; Bertha’s gaze connects the central face with John; the ribbon and cover direct attention downward. The painting’s economy lies in how much these few gestures achieve. Sully gives three named children a shared activity while keeping each one individually present.