#1622

Girl in a Paint-Decorated Chair

Attributed to Jonas Holman

A superb folk art portrait of a teenaged girl seated in a salmon colored fancy chair with red striping and green leafage and vines.
This portrait, which until recently was known only as being the work of an unidentified artist, is now recognized as one of Holman's masterpieces.  Long known through its publication in AMERICAN PAINTED FURNITURE, by Schaffner and Klein, p. 120, it has now been examined in the context of Holman's work by Anne Verplanck, Curator of Prints and Paintings at Winterthur Museum and in PORTRAIT OF A PAINTER:  THE DOUBLE-SIDED LIFE AND WORKS OF JONAS W. HOLMAN (1805-1873) by Caroline Riley, Figure 1.

The sitter, wearing a somewhat skeptical expression, is one of the artist's earliest known works and one of a group in which the subject is shown seated in a variant of the same decorated chair.  The painting, found in a home in western MA is considered by Riley to have been painted during the period when Holman, a ME born artist, was in Philidelphia.  Last year a work exhibiting many similar stylistic characteristics was found in a family home in Dorchester, MA.

Other works by the artist are in the collections of the Winterthur Museum, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection at Colonial Williamsburg, the Detroit Institute of Art, and Fruitlands Museum.

Oil on poplar panel circa 1827-1830.

1676

A family group of three portraits, identifed as Mr. and Mrs. Napper Tandy and Mrs. Elizabeth Huddleston.

Attributed to William L. Turner.


The figures are portrayed seated on a Federal sofa upholstered in red with brass tacks. The women are placed on either side of the man, and their portraits include the scolled arms at each end of an ached crest rail.


The atttribution is based on similarities to portaits signed by Turner and painted in Elizabethtown,
Kentucky in 1824. These paintings are slightly earliier, probably painted closer to 1820, and a letter that accompanies them sites family residence in Mason County in Kentucky.

#1584

A pair of portraits attributed to Milton W. Hopkins

These paintings descended in the family of Frederick Baker whose ancestors were early
settlers of the town of Pompey Hill, New York. Portrayed are a stylish young couple seated
with fringed red swagged drapery pulled back with red fabric rosettes, identical to the
drapery in a portrait of Margaret Place Baker, the only other known example of the artist's
work to use drapery, a popular period artistic convention.

The husband is shown at a writing table with ink well and quill pens and writing a letter.
He is seated in a grained and free-hand painted Hitchcock-type chair with leaf decoration
on its rolled crest ear, a typical Hopkins' detail. The wife has a beribboned head piece with
trailing streamers, another often seen Hopkins feature. She holds the same red book with
its text minutely detailed, as does Margaret Baker in her portrait. Her shawl, white and in
this case edged with a red paisley border, is an period status symbol, a provincial version of
the all paisley versions worn in the city.

Oil on poplar panel in virtually pristine condition. Circa 1835-1837.
Reference to the portrait of Margaret Place Baker: "FACE TO FACE: M. W. HOPKINS AND
NOAH NORTH", Jacqueline Oaks, p.77.

#1648   

An interesting historical portrayal of a meeting with Washington, painted and signed by Edmund Henry Garrett (1853-1929), a Boston artist, and inscribed by him as "From the original by N. C. Wyeth".  Probably painted around 1900 during the Colonial Revival period.

#1405

A VIEW ON THE HUDSON, PROBABLY WEST POINT FROM GARRISON'S LANDING

BY THOMAS CHAMBERS

A serene scene of sailboats on the river and a foreground figure who appears to be sketching. Dramatically lit and displaying Chamber's huge tonal range and extravagant color palette that includes turquoise water, a deep ochre road, and a pink and lavender tinged cloud-filled sky.

#1590

A dramatic portrayal of the shipwreck of the sailing vessel, the Bristol, off Rockaway Beach, New York (December 1839).

Attributed to Thomas Chambers

Portrayed against a rock-enclosed shoreline with a lighthouse, all seen by light shining through an opening in storm clouds within an unusual circular composition, a device that centers and focuses one's attention, thus, heightening the drama of the action being portrayed.

Circa 1850.

SOLD

#1538

A Folk Hudson River School painting dramatically depicting a scene with a lighthouse before a break in clouds that reveals deep blue sky.

In the foreground survivors from a capsized boat huddle on shore. A village set before blue mountains can visually can be read as also being silhouetted against another break in the clouds, an unusual reversal of positive and negative spaces within a folk painting.

#1460

The Bay of New York with a view of Castle William on Governor's Island and with ships in the harbor, is a large-scale Chamberesque painting filled with activity and drama beneath a stormy gray and pink-tinged sky. In its original circa 1845-1850 gold ripple frame and bearing a Brooklyn canvas purveyor's stamp.
29" x 36" plus frame

#1511

Rare example of an early eighteenth century school of painting referred to as "New York Dutch Scripture History Painting".

This work, actually of a mythological subject, portrays "Romulus and Remus Received into the Household of the Shepherd Faustulus and his Wife Acca Larentia", based on a print after a painting of the same name by Italian Mannerist painter Pietra da Cortona, done in 1643 and now in the Louvre.

In remarkable, nearly untouched condition, and in a
period Hogarth frame.

Illustrated and with textual analysis in "Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751", Neil Kamil, pp. 916-919, Figure 17.4.

Circa 1700-1740. 19.25"wx15"h.

#1601 Woman in a Chippendale Chair

Portrait of a woman from the Bush family of Albany, NY. This portrait was painted circa 1790 and shows the sitter holding a rose, a convention seen in earlier decades of female portraiture in the Hudson Valley. This work was painted in the decades between the Revolution, when portrait painting languished in this area and before the choice of the city to be the State's capitol, when it again gained prominence as an art form. Descended in the family of John T. Bush (born in Albany in 1854) through his daughter Mary.

#1600

A rare and fine portrait by Charles Delin, port painter of Maastrict and Amsterdam. Delin is known to have painted a number of naval figures from Newburyport, MA, and the painting was found there and had descended in the sitter's family. There are fewer than a half dozen portraits with ships under sail known by him. Of equal importance, the portrait is signed by Delin in the lower left corner. One of his large portraits, it was found with several small patches and is now relined but on its original stretcher and in its original frame.

#1530
                         Portrait of Edward Sterling with his Dog

A large-scale pastel portrait with watercolor details shows Edward, the son of Dr. Ann Jackson Buckner Sterling, with his pet poodle in a vibrantly colored, flower-filled setting.  Edward and his twin sister Helen Marion were born in Savannah, the children of an early woman doctor whose portrait is included with that of her son (as is a photograph of pastel portrait of his twin sister).

The pictures are composed of sheets of paper with strips added by the artist to enlarge them, mounted on their original stretched canvases.  Both pictures are in their original gilded frames and bear fragments of a Jacksonville, Florida newspaper which is dated 1877.  The family lived in a nearby area called Brooklyn, Florida from shortly after the Civil War, and the pictures hung in the family home here until 1967.  They have since descended in the family.

Circa 1845.  Framed dimensions 36 1/2 x 30 3/4 inches.

#1578

A beautiful and highly dramatic portrait of a woman wearing a black lace shawl.

Attributed to Zedekiah Belknap.

This is one of the artist's more extravagant images with its huge
tonal contrasts and large intricately patterned areas. The warm
facial tones of the sitter stand out against the startling contrast
of areas of black and white lace, which are set against a gray dress
and Belknap's typical neutral background.
New England circa 1823-1824.

#1558

A charming and folky portrait of a woman with a rosebud in her hair and wearing an unusual pictorial scarf decorated with deer and a house or church-like structure in a landscape setting. Oil on poplar panel constructed with breadboard ends. Probably NE circa 1835.

#1471

An unusual and highly stylized pair of pastel, charcoal, and watercolor portraits of "Mr. and Mrs. Broadhill of Chestnut Street" (Philadelphia). The pictures visually resemble smaller scale profile portraits and are primarily conceived as black and white images, like silhouetttes, although color is used sparingly in the faces and quite dramatically in the woman's striped dress.
Paper on original canvas mounts with the sitters' names and address inscribed on the back of one.
19 1/2" x 23 1/4" framed

#1543

Portraits of John B. Davis and his wife.

The husband is shown holding his eyeglasses and the wife with a locket encased portrait miniature. Both are seated before a view of water and boats. Remnants of the original frames identified the sitters and said 'Davis & Sprague Department Store, Union Street. Ironwood, Michigan.' The wife's portrait was dated there as 'May 1, 1843.'