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A Rich Simplicity: Folk Art from the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection

The visual simplicity of American folk painting speaks to the rich history of nineteenth century economic conditions and social values. Often associated with the luxury of the elite, portraits served many functions: they could symbolize familial status, commemorate matrimonial unions, preserve images for posterity or memorialize the deceased. In emulation of the wealthy, members of the burgeoning middle class in the nineteenth century desired pictures and patronized painters who responded with affordable images. The resulting proliferation of paintings is a remarkable example of prodigious supply and demand, and also reflects the increasing materialism of the era. (right: Ammi Phillips, Mary Elizabeth Smith, 1827, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 20 3/4 inches, Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.56 )

Rendered in a less ostentatious manner for these new middle-class patrons, plain portraits suited a puritanical taste for straightforward yet decorative depictions and reflected the efficient practice of many nineteenth-century painters.  Stylistic consistencies such as broad areas of color, flatness of form, and patterned surfaces constitute the common visual elements found in much folk painting. Whether this style was adopted by painters as a conscious artistic decision or signifies limited artistic ability is a topic of debate among folk art historians today.  

Folk painters often garnered their artistic skills by engaging in numerous professions like sign painting, carpentry or metalworking. They also learned from art manuals, print sources or an occasional apprenticeship, but rarely from formal academic training.  Itinerant painters traveled through rapidly growing towns and rural communities capturing likenesses, however approximate, to meet enthusiastic demands for portraits which were prestigious household items.  Many folk portraitists enjoyed considerable financial success and continued to obtain commissions, despite the competition of a new visual technology - the 1839 invention of photography.

Text accompanying the exhibited art:

Joseph Whiting Stock (1815-1855)

Captain J.L. Gardner's Son at Age 2-1/2, 1842

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.132

 

Joseph Whiting Stock, the prolific itinerant New England painter,

traveled in the region using a special wheelchair since an early

childhood accident left him crippled.  Stock learned to paint primarily

through art manuals and became best known for his full-length portraits

of children. His journals indicate that he earned an income of $6000 for

913 works of art, an exceptional amount for this period.

 

Stock painted Captain J. L. Gardner's Son at Age 2-1/2 during a

sixteen-week stay in Bristol, Rhode Island where, according to Stock,

"business was very dull."  This fine portrait demonstrates Stock's style

of heavily modeled facial features with parted lips and large eyes and

lavish environment emphasized here by the deep red drapery, patterned

carpet and fine furniture.

 

 

 

William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) and Sturtevant J. Hamblin

(active 1837-1856)

Young Boy Holding a Bow and Arrow with a Drum on the Floor, by 1856

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.123

 

Brothers-in-law and portrait painters, William Matthew Prior and

Sturtevant J. Hamblin lived together with their families in Boston by

1841. Many portraits have been attributed to both artists because they

worked in a generally similar style and in close association in their

shared workshop.

 

Artists depicted toys to distinguish the gender of the child since boys

and girls often wore the same style of clothes. Usually toys included in

portraits of boys were associated with the world of adult males, for

example, whips, wagons, or bow and arrows as shown in this portrait.

Popularity of manufactured and handmade toys increased in the

mid-nineteenth century reflecting the acceptance of child's

playØpreviously considered idle activity.

 

 

 

 

Henry Walton  (1804-1865)

Family Portrait, c. 1850

Watercolor selectively heightened with gum arabic on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.140

 

Henry Walton earned his living by painting portraits, primarily

watercolors, although he is most famous for his 1836-1850 lithographs of

New York townscapes.  Walton, born in New York, made his way to

California in 1851 with a gold rush party, but left for the Midwest in

1857 to settle in Michigan.

 

This itinerant artist masterfully rendered forms, color and texture

with convincing realismØindicative of the wide variety of styles

regarded as American folk art. Walton's attention to specificity and

detail was a result of his concerted effort to master technique through

practice both as a painter and printmaker.

 

 

 

Emily Eastman  (1804-?)

Young Woman with Flowers in Her Hair, between 1820-1830

Watercolor on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.51

 

During the 1820s-1830s, Emily Eastman, of Louden, New Hampshire,

painted watercolor portraits adapted from prints. The flattened design

of Young Woman with Flowers in Her Hair - the boldly arched eyebrows,

porcelain-like, expressionless face and the corkscrew curls of her

hairØis an accomplished yet stylized characterization.  

 

There were few women itinerant artists active in the nineteenth

century. Ladies' journals such as the popular Domestic Duties, by

Frances Byerly Parke, encouraged drawing as an "appropriate morning

activity" for middle-class women desiring refinement.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Adams Bartlett  (1817-1902)

Portrait of Harriet, c. 1840

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.14

 

Jonathan Adams Bartlett primarily painted portraits of family and

neighbors in the region near his hometown of Rumford, Maine. This

self-taught artist demonstrated an awareness of academic portraiture

conventions by depicting his sister in an elaborate setting of rich, red

drapery with gold trim, classical columns and booksØprops often used

in portraits of women to symbolize elevated social position or

education.  The frame (though not the original) is decorated with

flowers - typically feminine symbols.

 

The subject seems to have been interrupted from her reading. She looks

over her shoulder with a startled gaze, holding in her hand an opened

book while the drapery tassel swings in mid-air. Bartlett not only

revealed the intellectual curiosity of his sitter - unusual in folk

portraiture, which focused more on physical likeness than

personality - but reflected the nineteenth-century middle-class

interest in women's literacy by depicting her as actively engaged in

reading.

 

 

 

Anonymous

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1830

Oil on canvas mounted on masonite

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Gift of Mrs. Willis D. Nance

C1986.1

 

Portrait of a Woman straightforwardly exhibits the traits of plain folk

painting. The half-length portrait appears against an unadorned dark

background. The artist captured the individuality of the woman's facial

features with stylized angularity. An abstract pattern appears in the

lace fringe of the bonnet as its folds form a defined triangular

pattern.  

 

Black dresses were common attire for nineteenth-century women, both for

everyday wear and for special occasions.  A white bonnet with long

ribbons such as this one would be considered a "widow's cap" when worn

with black dresses trimmed with white. However, nineteenth-century Amish

and Mennonite women also wore such caps.

 

 

 

 

William Matthew Prior (1806-1873)

Double Portrait of Mary Cary and Susan Elizabeth Johnson, 1848

Oil on board mounted on panel

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.122

 

William Matthew Prior, artist and entrepreneur from Bath, Maine,

intentionally painted in a flattened style.  He advertised in the 1831

Maine Inquirer:  "Persons wishing for a flat picture can have a likeness

without shade or shadow at one quarter price."

Noted for his versatility of style, Prior succeeded in obtaining

numerous commissions for flat pictures due to their affordability and

quick execution.

 

Mary Cary and Susan Elizabeth Johnson from Provincetown, Massachusetts

are painted in Prior's "flat" style. Broad, confident brushwork, lively

surface pattern of the dresses as well as the encircling position of the

girls' arms reveal his expert understanding of paint, design and

composition. In addition to capturing the physical resemblance of the

two girls, Prior used conventions to suggest a close familial

relationship, such as the shared book, matching costumes and their

proximity to one another.

 

 

Ammi Phillips  (1788-1865)

Mary Elizabeth Smith, 1827

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.56

 

Ammi Phillips, from Colebrook, Connecticut, advertised as an itinerant

painter in New England newspapers, describing his ability to capture: "a

correct style, perfect shadows, and elegant dresses." To promote a

pleasing likeness, Phillips offered to supply costumes for his

subjectsØalso a practice of painter Erastus Salisbury Field.

Phillips developed a strong clientele base by integrating himself into

various communities long enough to be considered the logical choice for

portrait commissions.

 

Phillips painted the fair-skinned, six-month old Mary Elizabeth Smith

(later Mrs. S. Canfield) an only child from Orange County, New York,

against the reddish-black "mulberry" colored background typical of his

1820s works. This painting, representative of the history of many folk

portraits, remained in the family before entering the Terra Foundation

for the Arts collection. The baby, wearing a delicately rendered white

eyelet dress and bonnet, clasps a sprig of ripening strawberries,

symbolizing her gender and youth. Children and adults of the nineteenth

century often wore coral necklaces for adornment although they

previously signified protection against illness and misfortune.

 

 

 

 

Pieter Vanderlyn  (1687-1778)

Portrait of Mrs. Myndert Myndertse (Jannetje-Persen) and Her Daughter,

Sara, c. 1752

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.138

 

Pieter Vanderlyn emigrated from the Netherlands to New York in 1718 and

served as a ship surgeon, composer, land speculator, and portrait

painter of the patroons - leading Dutch landholders of the upper Hudson

River Valley region - from 1730 to 1750.  Vanderlyn's painting is a

rigid yet tender portrayal of a mother and child. The composition

demonstrates Vanderlyn's awareness of earlier Dutch portraits he may

have observed in the form of prints hung in Dutch households.  

 

Despite the influence of Dutch art, the painter executed this work when

the region came under British rule. American taste shifted to a

preference for English-style portraits that featured more relaxed poses

and gestures, modestly attempted by Vanderlyn through the suggested

affection of the mother for her child.

 

 

 

 

Erastus Salisbury Field (1805-1900)

Portrait of a Woman said to be Clarissa Gallond Cook, in Front of a

Cityscape, c. 1839

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition

Endowment Fund, 2000.4

 

Painter Erastus Salisbury Field of Leverett, Massachusetts, enjoyed a

prolific and prosperous career of sixty-five years. After brief

instruction in 1824 from Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872), Field crossed

New England to paint portraits of rural society figures. The 1830s were

productive for Field: he refined his artistic skills, developed an

increasingly personal style and obtained commissions through a network

of family associations.

 

Field painted several portraits of residents from Petersham,

Massachusetts, among them the Cook and Gallond families. In this

portrait said to be Clarissa Gallond Cook, Field skillfully portrayed

the sitter's prominent brow and long nose as well as her modishly styled

hair of the mid-1830s.

 

The unusual background shows an unidentifiable port city, perhaps along

the Hudson River where the Cook family sailed their merchant schooner,

the "Sarah Taintor." Instead of a traditional feminine landscape

setting, the female sitter is posed before a background suggestive of

trade and industry more typically found in male portraits.  A similarly

provocative background appears in a Field portrait from the Shelburne

Museum in Vermont.  The identification of the sitter remains in

question. She may be one of Clarissa's sisters, Almira Gallond Moore or

Louisa Gallond Cook, who also married into the Cook family.

 

 

 

 

Joseph H. Davis (1811-1865)

Gentleman in Profile, between 1820-1850

Watercolor selectively heightened with gum arabic on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.30

 

Joseph H. Davis (1811-1865)

Hannah Roberts and Lewis Tebbets, 1833

Watercolor on tan wove paper cut-outs mounted on illustration board

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.31

 

Many early-nineteenth-century paintings of young adults depict

courtship or engagement, as might this one. Although books commonly

symbolized refinement and frequently appear in Davis's portraits, this

book joins the couple, perhaps emphasizing their pending union. The

unpainted background accentuates the fashionable couple's costume and

coiffure which are rendered with crisp precision. The colorful

decorative carpet or stenciled floor provides visual weight that helps

to anchor the figures in space.

 

 

 

Joseph H. Davis (1811-1865)

Samuel T. and Mary Vickery, 1834

Watercolor over graphite selectively heightened with gum arabic on

cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.36

 

Joseph H. Davis, of New Hampshire and Maine, primarily painted profile

likenesses of New England residents in watercolor on paper, a less

expensive and more convenient medium to travel with than oil paint and

canvas. In his distinct style, Davis rendered facial features with

linear precision and objects signifying refined middle-class taste with

meticulous description.  

 

Several Davis trademarks appear in this watercolor: the sitters' names

and ages and the date appear in skillful calligraphic lettering along

the base of the painting and a framed picture above a table - in this

case, a farm - typically a reference to the sitter's home or business.

 

Samuel wears a plain suit, which communicated respectability and

personal achievement during this time of emerging American capitalism.

His colorfully decorated soft cap, an accessory worn at home or in

casual situations, stands in contrast to his somber costume.  Mary

Vickery's dress expresses prosperity through the fine delicate quality

of her lace apron, her fringed red kerchief, and the rich blue gown with

large puffed sleeves that were in vogue from 1825 to 1840.

 

 

 

 

Jacob Maentel (1778-1863)

German-born Jacob Maentel engaged in several professions during his

lifetime: secretary to Napoleon, physician, and farmer. Shortly after

his arrival in America in 1806, he served as a soldier during the war of

1812 and eventually became an itinerant portrait painter traveling among

the German communities of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the utopian

village of New Harmony, Indiana. He painted frank depictions of friends

and family in full-length profile or frontal poses set in elaborate

interiors or in landscapes.

 

Jacob Maentel  (1778-1863)

Child with Rose, between 1825-1830

Watercolor on on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.92

 

Flowers and pets frequently appeared in folk portraits of children.

Often these have symbolic meaning, such as the rose, a convention used

to indicate the female gender. Approximately seventy-five percent of all

nineteenth-century images of children are posthumous mourning portraits

due to the high mortality rate of the period. The seeming weightlessness

and stiff quality of this figure shown standing against a rose-tinted

sky (an indicator of death) suggest this painting maybe a memorial to a

daughter. Other mourning portraits feature leafless trees, drooping

flowers, empty baby shoes, chairs, or cradle.

 

 

 

Jacob Maentel  (1778-1863)

Portrait of Wilhelm Witz and His Pet Dogs, c. 1810

Watercolor on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.93

 

The inclusion of German calligraphic inscriptions "Copenhagen Waltzes"

and "Eat, Drink and Be Merry to All" in the watercolor portrait of

Wilhelm Witz aligns this work with the fraktur traditionØa

Pennsylvania German-American art form comprising painted birth, marriage

or baptismal certificates with distinctive, decorative lettering.

 

Witz, a smartly clad gentleman with appropriately formal everyday

costume - tailcoat and top hat - appears opposite two dogs, one likewise

accessorized with a decorative collar of spiked metalwork, against a

small hilly landscape.  Several objects allude to the celebratory nature

of this picture. These include red wine, or possibly Marzen, a

reddish-amber German beer; oysters (symbols of good fortune and a

popular dish peddled throughout New England beginning in 1800) and the

decorated tambourine Witz holds, an instrument associated with rejoicing

and happiness.

 

 

 

Jacob Maentel  (1778-1863)

Woman in Profile with a Flower, c. 1815

Watercolor on cream wove paper

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.94

 

Since the landscape appears diminutive, with small arched hills, tiny

shrubs and treesØa formula often used by Maentel - the figure appears

commanding and monumental, drawing attention to her costume, coiffure

and likeness. This portrait reflects the popular trend in fashion, from

1800-1820, of modish dress with raised waistlines and soft gathers and

intricate hairstyle.  

 

 

The period between 1830 and 1850 was a time of social egalitarianism,

rapid economic and social change, and significant commerce. On the

frontier, roads were built, land was cleared for farming and trades

flourished. Artists acted as entrepreneurs and brought to rural

Americans the opportunity to acquire works of art for house-hold

decoration. The prestige associated with owning artwork, whether by fine

artists or untrained itinerant artists, allowed middle-class citizens to

associate themselves with the elite realm of fashion, elegance, and

taste.

 

 

Ammi Phillips  (1788-1865)

Girl in a Red Dress, c. 1835

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.57

 

 

"The figure of this noble bird is well known throughout the civilized

world, emblazoned as it is on our national standard, which waves in the

breeze of every clime, bearing in distant lands the remembrance of a

great people living in a state of peaceful freedom. May that peaceful

freedom last forever!"

 

 

John James Audubon, 1832

 

 

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

John James Audubon (1785-1851) spent almost twenty years on the

monumental publication The Birds of America - a realization of his goal

to create a definitive study of the birds in North America. Portrait

commissions enabled this itinerant artist to support himself on

expeditions as he built his portfolio of birds. He undertook this

entrepreneurial task to artistically surpass such attempts by others as

well as to satisfy his passionate interest in nature.

 

Traveling through the North American wilderness, Audubon hunted and

collected specimens of birds as he observed them in their natural

habitat. He then wired the freshly killed birds into dramatic yet

lifelike positions to reproduce them in watercolor to exact size, thus

bigger birds often appeared bent like the American Flamingo.

 

Audubon closely replicated the individual markings of birds with great

attention to detail as in the now-extinct Carolina Parrot. As Audubon

proudly noted: "Doubtless, the reader will say, while looking at the

seven Parakeets in the plate, that I spared not my labor. I never do, so

anxious am I to promote his pleasure."

 

Audubon set out to publish his exhaustive artistic and scientific study

of birds as a series of hand-colored prints in 1827. Little interest

from printmakers in the United States to print his publication, The

Birds of America, prompted Audubon to hire Robert Havell Jr. of London,

England to make etchings of his watercolors. The collaborative aspects

of the enterprising project included an exchange of proofs between

Havell and Audubon. The traveling artist approved them or annotated them

with corrections. Havell often repositioned or eliminated birds and also

added floral backgrounds or landscapes to enhance the compositions of

the etchings.

 

The Birds of America was a publication sold through subscription.

Audubon marketed it through personal contacts, exhibitions of the

original watercolors, membership in scientific and social organizations

and publication in scientific journals, newspapers and magazines.

Approximately 200 published copies were bound into 4 volumes and printed

as a double elephant folioØcalled so for the size of its large paper,

measuring 29 x 39 inches.

 

Today, close to two centuries since its publication, almost half of The

Birds of America volumes have been disbound, often to reap the financial

benefits in selling the prints individually - a testimony to the

enduring appeal of Audubon's masterful and innovative depictions.

 

 

John James Audubon  (1785-1851)

The Birds of America, Vol. 3, 1827-1838

Hand-colored aquatint engravings

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1984.3.3

 

 

 

 

EDWARD HICKS

Edward Hicks's deep religious devotion influenced all aspects of his

life, including painting. Over the course of approximately thirty-three

years, he created sixty-two paintings inspired by the peaceable kingdom

theme described in Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 6 through 9 of the Bible.

This prophecy embodied key Quaker beliefs and promoted a peaceful and

harmonious state of coexistence through denial of the willful self (to

suppress participation or interest in worldly concerns and passions).

 

In 1827, the Quaker religion split into two factions: the Orthodox and

the Hicksites. Hicks's beliefs placed him firmly with the Hicksites,

named after his cousin, Elias Hicks, who played a prominent role in the

Quaker separation. The Quaker ideal of quietism was to rid oneself of

all worldly concerns, become quieted and prepare to receive from God,

the Inward Light which guided and enlightened the soul. Quietism began

to wane among Quakers (the Orthodox) who stressed the authority of the

Bible and evangelism, the zealous preaching of the gospel.  Hicksites

rejected this practice and promoted an extreme form of quietism.

 

Through his art however, Edward Hicks used animal metaphor to promote

peace among the conflicting Quaker factions. The  symbolic meanings of

his animals were based on medieval humoralismØthe association of human

character with four fluids of the body. Hicks associated wolves with

melancholy (bile), representing the solitary; leopards with passion or

sanguine (blood), representing zealots and social worldliness; bears

with apathy (phlegm), representing the unfeeling; and lions with anger

(choler), representing intellect, bravery and destruction. Quakers

thought these symbols to be expressions of undesirable human behaviors.

In contrast, Hicks included in his paintings grain-feeding animals and a

child to exemplify innocence and nurturing.

 

 

PEACEABLE KINGDOM

Edward Hicks, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania became an unpaid preacher

in 1812 and key figure along with his cousin Elias Hicks in the Quaker

separation of 1827. The Quaker religion stressed simplicity in terms of

education, wealth and art. Hicks justified his career as an ornamental

painter by claiming the craft as his only talent. His oil paintings were

typically given as gifts and proved acceptable because of their didactic

nature.

 

Hicks's many versions of the peaceable kingdom are highly symbolic

paintings with complex associative meanings. They feature symbols of

innocence, represented by a child or grain-fed animals and of

worldliness, represented by carnivorous animals. In A Peaceable Kingdom

with Quakers Bearing Banners the child's arm protectively - perhaps even

threateningly - encircles the lion while holding a bough of grapes,

emblematic of salvation. In Hicks's paintings the lion, king of beasts,

suppresses its predatory nature and denies its will to reign so as to

peacefully coexist among its prey. Hicks metaphorically linked the

lion's behavior with an ideal of Quaker quietism - denial of

self-will - by depicting the animal's restraint.

 

Sixty-two known versions of the Peaceable Kingdom theme exist by Edward

Hicks, nine of which include banners para-phrasing passages from the

book of Luke. A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners depicts a

variation of the peaceable kingdom theme with a group of figures holding

a curving banner that reads: "mind the LIGHT within IT IS GLAD TIDEING

of Grate JOY PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL to ALL MEN Everywhere."

 

In this painting like his other banner pictures Hicks presents a

mixture of historical and contemporary figures. His inclusion of women

amongst the Hicksites that make up the crowd on the left acknowledges

their importance to Quaker life and to Quaker ministry as preachers. In

memorial of his recent death in 1830, Elias Hicks appears in profile

standing at the front of the crowd, hatless and in riding

boots- typical attire for a traveling minister - with a handkerchief

in hand to absorb perspiration from spirited preaching.  

 

Upon the hilltop Hicks painted thirteen figures in white to represent

Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Three other figures appear just

below: Robert Barclay, theological advocate for the Hicksites, George

Fox, founder of Quakerism, and William Penn, famous for establishing a

treaty with Native Americans in 1682. Penn's inclusion in the painting

would have been understood by Hicks's mid-nineteenth-century audience to

represent innocence.

 

 

Edward Hicks  (1780-1849)

A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners, c. 1830

Oil on canvas

Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1993.7

 

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