Boy in Red,

ca. 1832

These paired portraits are two of nine known paintings produced by Phillips in the 1830s depicting small children in nearly identical stock dresses. All but two hold a strawberry plant, whose red, almost heart-shaped fruit perhaps connotes love. Because young boys and girls were dressed similarly in the nineteenth century, it is sometimes difficult to ascertain the sex of a child in a portrait, although accompanying accoutrements can provide clues, establishing gender roles often at the expense of women and their social agency. The boy in Boy in Red holds a utilitarian toy hammer positioned before him like a displaced phallus, suggesting his future role as creator and builder. The painting’s cognate, Girl in Pink, represents a girl wearing a coral teething necklace and displaying a piece of fruit in front of her womb, symbolizing her eventual fertility.