A celebrated portraitist, Stoddard often included family pets in her works. The Puppies’ Angel presents a transfiguration of this genre. Here, a blonde female angel cuddles a small black puppy; a second puppy looks up in adoration. The model is the artist’s relative Sandy Stoddard, posed in the artist’s Chestnut Hill home on West Gravers Lane. The backdrop seems to be a white sheet, arranged to suggest clouds. Stoddard had served as a combat artist in World War I, and she designed military aircraft during World War II. In light of these experiences, we can imagine that angels and puppies are a metaphor for the eternal embrace of the many innocent souls lost in the wars.
Stoddard was born in Watertown, Connecticut, and was a cousin of renowned American illustrator Rockwell Kent. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now the Moore College of Art and Design) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where she took classes with William Merritt Chase and Cecilia Beaux. During World War I, Stoddard served as a combat artist with US regiments on the European front. She depicted the bravery of soldiers and the plight of French refugees in paintings and drawings, which were published by the United States Army to elicit support for the war effort. Then, during World War II, Stoddard worked as a drafting artist and instructor making airplane schematics for the Budd Company, a leading manufacturer of airplanes and defense equipment located on Hunting Park Avenue in Philadelphia.
In addition to her work as a portraitist, Stoddard also pursued painting seascapes on Monhegan Island, Maine, beginning in 1909. She was one of four Monhegan women painters to be elected to the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1948, she married her longtime friend and fellow artist Joseph Pearson. Further, Stoddard was a close friend of Woodmere’s director, Edith Emerson, and assisted in cataloguing the museum’s collection. Stoddard was listed in the historic biographical index Who’s Who in American Art in the first volume featuring women artists.
