American Painting and Sculpture

JAMES PEALE
(American, 1749-1831)

Madame Dubocq and Her Four Children, 1807
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Algae Kent Bixby 1932.29.1
Conservation supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency.

Madame Marie Tracbon Dubocq was born in Nantes, France, the daughter of Count Trochon de Lorrière. Marie Trochon was taken as a child to Haiti, a French colony. There she met and married French merchant, William Dubocq. The Dubocq family moved to Philadelphia during the Haitian Insurrection, but relocated to Shippingport, Kentucky, during the early 1830s.

Artist James Peale painted Madame Dubocq and her children while the family lived in Philadelphia. Peale, the younger brother of the famous artist Charles Willson Peale, painted several large-scale portraits like this one, but specialized in miniatures. The Dubocq family brought the portrait with them when they moved to Kentucky. Like many affluent families who migrated to the state, the Dubocqs sought to retain some of their cultural traditions even in the settlements of Kentucky.