John Merrick Paine inherited from his father, John Paine, Jr., two portraits by Winthrop Chandler, painted around 1780. The portraits (now in the NGA) depict the artist's brother, Captain Samuel Chandler, and his wife, née Anna Paine. Having no children of their own, the Chandlers had raised Anna's nephew, John Paine (Sr.); the latter inherited the portraits along with Chandler's 300-acre farm. The pictures thus descended in the Paine family. John Merrick Paine in turn passed them to his son, Dr. Robert Child Paine.