"Portrait of Mrs Richard Steere Aldrich," by Edward Barnard Lintott

Edward Barnard Lintott's "Portrait of Mrs Richard Steere Aldrich" hangs in the lobby of the Hotel Providence on Mathewson Street.

Richard was a member of the US House of Representatives from Rhode Island's 2nd district from 1923-33, and he and Janet Aldrich (nee Innis, formerly White [divorced]) seem to have had, as far as is possible to know, a fine marriage.

Edward Barnard Lintott, a British painter of portraits and landscapes and author of Art of Watercolour (1926), was a relatively successful artist in both England and America, with shows during his lifetime at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and his alma mater, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, among other institutions.

Not much documentation can be found about the commission or execution of this particular portrait, probably completed around 1923-5, a few years after her marriage to Aldrich.

The shadow in the painting often appears to be the shadow of the sitter, sometimes the shadow of the painter, sometimes the shadow of the viewer. Sometimes it disappears. Sometimes it does not appear human. No activity or other phenomena are associated with the artwork, artist, or subject.

Photos below represent samples taken by this researcher over a range of dates, as well as additional examples culled from a variety of trustworthy online and print sources (used without permission and posted here without credit). Variations in color, tone, and angle are incidental and due to time of day and other technical discrepancies between photographs and photographers, and are not intended to imply that those variations are actual physical differences manifested in the painting. High-resolution originals available to serious researchers upon request.