Henrietta Dorr was about six when her father, Dr. Russell Dorr of Chatham, New York, commissioned itinerant artist Ammi Phillips to paint individual portraits of his family. Remarkably, all eight works survive, grouped in pairs of diminishing size by the sitters’ ages, with those of Henrietta and her youngest brother, Robert, being the smallest. Phillips rendered the Door family in what is known as his “Border” style, referring to a period from 1813–19 when the artist depicted residents from towns along the intersecting New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut state lines. Flat, starkly modeled, with simple compositions, these works are also delicate and fresh, contrasting markedly with Phillips’s later work in which a decorative and formulaic stylization predominates. One of several portraits by the artist in the Museum’s esteemed Balken collection of American Folk Art, Henrietta Dorr is both its most penetrating and its most endearing.

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　　Ammi Phillips (1788-1865)，美国画家，可谓是第一代土生土长的美国人，他生于华盛顿就任美国第一任总统时，卒于美国内战前后。在他那个年代，学习艺术可不像今天这样容易，Ammi不得不选择自学，以实现艺术理想。

　　Ammi Phillips曾在十九世纪上半叶的美国画坛享有盛名。然而，Ammi去世后，其人其作迅速被遗忘，一直要到研究美国民俗艺术的收藏家夫妇Barbara与Larry Holdridge在二十世纪初的不断推介，这位肖像画家的作品才重回观众视野。

　　Ammi Phillips作品中的那种沉静、安宁的味道，十分耐人揣摩，画家对处理光影的能力及对于时下风尚的捕捉，亦自信十足。