Charles Frederick Thompson, Son of the Artist, in Red

The eighth and last child of the artist by his first wife Olive Leonard (who died in 1819), Charles (1816–1839) would die in his early twenties “in the South.” In this portrait he is a wiggly little boy, at age three or four, and the artist probably gave up on painting more than a rough sketch, as evidenced by the unfinished hands of the toddler. On the lower left is the artist’s cold stamp: C. THOMPSON, an unusual practice, seemingly of Thompson’s own invention.