A Painter’s Visit to Wilbraham: The Merrick Portraits of Joseph Whiting Stock

Joseph Whiting Stock (January 30, 1815 – 1855) was one of the most prolific itinerant portrait painters in nineteenth-century New England. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, into a modest family of twelve children, Stock’s life and career were shaped by a tragic accident that might have ended his prospects altogether. At the age of eleven, an oxcart fell on him, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Rather than abandon the hope of self-support, Stock turned to art. On the advice of his physician, he began studying painting with Franklin White, a pupil of the well-known portraitist Chester Harding. In 1834, Dr. James Swan commissioned Stock to produce a series of anatomical drawings for medical lectures. That same year, Dr. Swan designed a special wheelchair that allowed Stock both mobility and the ability to work on large canvases. This invention transformed Stock’s life. With it, he could travel by train, set up temporary studios, and earn a living as a professional painter.

Self-Portrait, circa 1843, oil on board by Joseph Whiting Stock. Springfield Museums

By 1836, Stock had begun his long career as an itinerant artist, traveling through towns in western Massachusetts, northern Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Although his permanent studio remained in Springfield, he spent months at a time in surrounding communities, painting portraits on commission in exchange for fees, lodging, or board.

One of the communities where Joseph Whiting Stock worked was Wilbraham, and it is here that his career intersects with an important local family. In 1996, the late Wilbraham historian Llewellyn Merrick recorded a family tradition that Stock stayed at the home of Dr. Samuel Fisk Merrick while working in town and painted two portraits for the family in exchange for room and board. These portraits were said to depict two daughters of the Merrick family: one of Roxanne Merrick, shown holding a flower, and the other of Lydia Merrick, who had died in 1831.

Several details, however, suggest a more complicated story behind these works. Stock did not begin his professional painting career until about 1836, five years after Lydia’s death. This timing strongly suggests that Lydia’s portrait was a posthumous memorial painting rather than a likeness made from life. In addition, the two girls in the portraits appear remarkably similar in age and facial features, raising the possibility that Roxanne served as the living model for both images.

The family relationships further support this interpretation. Dr. Samuel Fisk Merrick had eleven children, yet none were named Roxanne. His son, Samuel Fisk Merrick Jr., however, did have a daughter named Roxanne, who would have been at least ten years old when Stock was active in Wilbraham. Since Dr. Merrick died in 1836 and his wife in 1835, it is likely that Stock stayed at the home of Samuel Jr., rather than at his father’s former residence. In this scenario, Stock painted a living portrait of young Roxanne and used her as the model for a memorial image of Lydia, who had died several years earlier.

Yet this explanation is not without difficulty. Lydia was thirty-six years old at the time of her death, which raises further uncertainty about whether the portrait truly represents her, or whether it depicts another child altogether. As with much early nineteenth-century family history, the identities behind these two portraits remain uncertain, and the true story may never be fully known.

The darker palette of these two portraits, compared with Stock’s later, brighter works, suggests that they were painted early in his career, before his style matured. Their present whereabouts remain uncertain. Given that the Springfield Museum holds a substantial collection of Stock’s paintings, it is possible that these Wilbraham portraits entered that collection, though no firm documentation has yet been found.

Stock’s career continued to expand despite repeated hardships. In 1839, he was badly burned in a studio fire while preparing varnish. He later suffered from typhoid fever and a severe hip infection that required surgery. Remarkably, he recovered from these setbacks and resumed traveling for commissions. In the early 1840s, he worked briefly with his brother-in-law, Otis H. Cooley, a daguerreotype maker, and later opened a small daguerreotype shop in Springfield.

In 1852, Stock moved to Orange County, New York, where he broadened his business to include book illustration, copying daguerreotypes, selling frames and art supplies, and training a young partner, Salmon W. Corwin. Together they published a hand-colored view of Port Jervis, New York.

Throughout his career, Stock kept a detailed account book recording patrons, prices, and subjects. Between 1832 and 1846 alone, he completed more than nine hundred works. He became especially known for his full-length portraits of children, often shown with pets or toys, offering rare glimpses into domestic life in early nineteenth-century New England.

Stock’s life ended prematurely in 1855, when he died of tuberculosis in Springfield at the age of forty. Yet his legacy endures, not only in museums and private collections, but also in towns like Wilbraham, where his brief stay and the mysterious Merrick portraits link a national figure in American folk art to the local history of the town.

Portrait of Mary Wilcox, Springfield, MA. 1845. The American Folk Art Museum