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Member of the Angell Family with Masonic Symbols
ca. 1820
Arnold Steere (1792-1832), possibly
USA: Rhode Island, Woonsocket
Oil on canvas
Frame: 29"h x 25-1/2"w x 1-1/2"d; Stretcher: 25-1/4"h x 22"w x 1/2"d
Museum Purchase
99.009

Member of the Angell family with Masonic symbols; wearing a dark coat with high collar, floral waistcoat, and ruffled neck stock with pin; to left of face, against the dark background, is an open Bible with square & compasses; signed by the artist "Steere Pinx" at lower left; reverse inscribed "John S. Angell/ from/ Grandma Angell".


Artist Arnold Steere painted this member of the Angell family wearing street clothes—a coat, waistcoat, shirt, neck cloth and pin. To the subject’s right Steere added, along with his signature, a Masonic symbol—an open Bible with a square and compasses on top. The portrait’s subject likely requested that the artist include this symbol, suggesting that he was a Mason. Members of the Angell family were involved with the fraternity in the 1820s, but which of them is depicted here is not known.