Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00009614"Old Pat," The Independent Beggar
About the Artwork
With this study of a disheveled person—perhaps a man named Patrick MacGregor—the popular society portraitist Samuel Waldo challenged assumptions that successful New Yorkers may have made about their city's prosperity. Waldo sold many copies of an engraving portraying "Old Pat" and made a finished portrait of him called The Beggar's Dessert that included a meager bone and bowl as attributes. In this painting, the sitter's gaunt, careworn features suggest considering him in sympathetic terms, yet his forceful gaze presents him as someone who cannot easily be made into an object of pity.
Provenance
Albert Rosenthal, Philadelphia (1916; acquired by The Cleveland Museum of Art from J. H. Wade in 1916.
Exhibition history
Inaugural Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (June 6-September 20, 1916). The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 4, 1936).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Samuel Lovett Waldo (American, 1783–1861)
- Date
- c. 1819
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Dimensions
- Framed: 68 x 57 x 7 cm (26 3/4 x 22 7/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 47.8 x 36.9 cm (18 13/16 x 14 1/2 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of J. H. Wade
- Accession no.
- 1916.998
More by Samuel Lovett Waldo in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00009614
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