Miss Schaum

Jacob Eichholtz · 1808–10

Medium

Oil on yellow poplar panel

Original size

22.9 × 17.8 cm (9 × 7 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Miss Schaum is a quietly arresting portrait — intimate in scale yet confident in presence, with the warm golden undertones of its yellow poplar panel giving the sitter's complexion an almost luminous quality. Jacob Eichholtz began his career as a tinsmith in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and taught himself to paint largely through observation before receiving brief guidance from Gilbert Stuart in 1811. That self-forged discipline shows in work like this: direct, unfussy likenesses with genuine psychological weight, rooted in the tradition of American Federal-era portraiture but without the stiffness that often characterised it. Painting on panel rather than canvas was an uncommon choice for American portraitists of this period, lending the surface a smooth, almost jewel-like finish that differentiates his early commissions from the broader field. Eichholtz eventually gave up his trade entirely to paint full-time — a rare commitment for a provincial artist of his era — and built a substantial reputation across Pennsylvania and Maryland entirely on the strength of portraits like this one. The hand-painted oil reproduction honours that same surface quality and tonal precision, rendered by skilled artists working from high-resolution reference to preserve every nuance of Eichholtz's restrained palette and the sitter's calm, considered gaze.