A House Portrait from Madison, New Jersey

by Jennifer Skopp

A woman hired Jennifer Skopp to create a Watercolor House Portrait. She was selling the home that she and her siblings grew up in and wanted to preserve the memories of life growing up in that family home.

This saltbox style house is light-beige and has a dark gray roof. A saltbox house is a traditional New England-style colonial home that has two stories. It’s called saltbox because it resembles the lidded boxes that were used to store coarse salt in colonial kitchens.

The house has a small, white pediment on top of the front entrance. There are two columns holding it up and a hanging lamp. Three steps lead to the front door, which is painted black. The door has two white panels on each side. Each panel has three small windows arranged vertically. There are three vertical windows on the second floor and two on the ground level that are all the same size. Each window contains twelve panes of glass.

In front of the house are shrubs and flowers on each side of the front entrance. There is a long, narrow, red brick path that leads from the front door to the sidewalk. The left side of the house, closer to the sidewalk, has a tall, old tree. It is surrounded by a shallow circle of multi-colored pieces of slate. Two colorful arrangements of flowers hang from a standing plant hanger, which is inserted in the soil.