The Hoppner Children

Three children sit and stand in a grassy natural setting: a girl at the right stands with arms folded across her chest, wearing a russet dress with a ruffled white collar, while a boy at the far left sits naked on a white cloth draped over the grass and a third child sits between them with a light garment over one shoulder — trees with fall-colored foliage, a reflective stream and distant cloudy skies behind. John Hoppner, the fashionable British portraitist who rose to be the most serious rival of Sir Thomas Lawrence, exhibited this group as “Portraits of Children” at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1791, the year it was painted. The canvas passed from the artist’s wife to her sons, was sold at Christie’s in 1893, and was purchased that same year by Peter A. B. Widener of Lynnewood Hall, whose collection came to the National Gallery of Art as the Widener Collection gift in 1942. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.