Collection: Paintings

Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches. Artist is John Lamont Brodie, Scottish artist. Excellent condition, in an appropriate reproduction frame. Circa 1830-1840. Found in Cazenovia, New York, in a house sale. The subject of the painting wears a wedding band, and it is a rarely depicted scene, possibly of a woman watching for her husband arriving from sea. An anchor is pictured in the background beneath her arm, and the waves of the ocean are seen in the distance.

This dramatic painting crosses the border between folk and academic art.  The extravagance of the sitter's setting, costume, and jewelry are likewise anomalies.  I think the painting is from a coastal NE city or from New York. It is dated 1838, and signed 'P---Platt.  It has been strip-lined and has a very minor surface repair.

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

T. Bonneau (drawer), Iberville PQ

T. Bonneau, an artist whose name has escaped note for his works painted in northwestern New York State and northern New England, is here identified in a Canadian painting. The works are distinctive: architectural simplifcation with internal linear details emphasized, boldness of drawing, interesting color palettes, flattened perspective lines to base of structures and stacked planes indicating recession in space.

Works by this artist from Upstate New York and northern New England are included in "Folk Painters of America" by Robert Bishop, cover and pg 115; "The Marcus Collection", Sotheby's , Ocober 1989, lots 30 and 31; and "Seasonal Selections", The Magazine Antiques", at Giampietro, New York. 

Circa 1900. Watercolor and ink on paper, 19 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches sight, floating on a mat in a simple modern painted frame, 22 1/4 x 28 1/2 inches.

This portrait, early in date for an American portrait, gets its charm from the very characteristics that make it different from those which follow more English traditions of the period. The child's gaze is at the viewer (or the artist) and has a casual affect, not the more formal impression of English portraiture. She is posed in a three-quarter length standing pose, and her hands on the basket match the sensitivity seen in her gaze. Her red dress is trimmed in white lace, a costume seen in other works of children attributed to Delanoy.

The attribution of this painting to Abraham Delanoy, Jr. is made through stylistic comparisons with known Delanoy portraits of the family of John Sherman of Connecticut. The artist was previously referred to as the Sherman Limner, and the girl in the red dress is very similar stylistically to the portrait of David Austin Sherman. Two portraits of Sherman children are considered lost, and this may be one of them. There is no question that our young girl and the Sherman family portraits are by the same hand.

In the portrait of Mrs. Sherman there is a very similar basket that contains the same fruits: a bunch of white and blue grapes, and two peaches. Delanoy is considered to have been one of the most gifted painters practicing in the Colonies in the 1780's.

Please see DOCUMENTATION for complete condition report and publication references. Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches.

This portrait epitomizes the graceful female poses of the artist's Kent period style (1829-1838) and is an example from a small group of portraits in which he exaggerated the sitter's wide oval neckline and adorned it with lace that forms a pendant, scalloped border to a dress with a tight upper sleeve design that balloons from the elbow before it tapers to a narrow cuff. Ann, like the other women from this group, rests one arm on a table with a book while holding an object, here a sprig of parsley.

Ann Miller was born in Somers, New York and married John M. Tompkins. They are buried in the cemetary of the Tomahawk Chapel in Somers, built by her brother Thomas Miller in 1837. The painting has descended in the family until this time.

Marvelously intense, serious yet sensitive, this young woman is a masterpiece of adult folk portraiture in the Prior tradition of producing inexpensive portraits quickly, yet capable, as was Prior, of perceptive observation and skillful design.

The details of translucent lace, a mosaic brooch, and a dreamy landscape that frames her upper body, surrounded otherwise by evening light and holding a red book that could not in the darkness be read.

The painting is wonderfully preserved and signed and dated on the backboard and frame. Later notation, pencil inscribed, relates, "French family her aunt Solt in Bristol/Aunt of Mrs. Lorenzo Sherman/ Kingston Rhode Island."

The work is 20 x 14 1/2 inches, on artists' board with a traditional wooden backboard behind it and framed in a mahogany veneered frame from which the liner has been removed to expose more of the painting's edges.

Decorated with a compote framed by pink drapes, a very rare decorative motif for a fireboard, A similar example, already sold bore a simple landscape scene, presumably of the family homestead.  Both are painted by the same unidentified artist.

Mary Jarvis's memorial celebration to honor her mother led to the custom of honoring all mothers with the observation of Mother's Day.

Webster, West Virginia.  Circa 1825-1830.

38 1/2 by 42 inches.

Pictured with a vase of flowers beside her on a table, seated in a paint decorated chair, and holding a beaded purse with floral decoration on it.

Painted inscription on the back reads:

Painted By J. Parks
Nov 1837

For Catherine J (?) Rogers
Born Dec 3rd 1819

Parks' work in the 1830's is said to be from Mohawk Valley, New York.

Reference: "The Folk Tradition: Early Arts and Crafts of the Susquehanna Valley," compilrd by Richard I. Barons, pp. 6-8.

Small repairs and minor scattered inpaint. Period frame.

This portrait, executed primarily in red, white and black, has a dramatic flare that defines the strongest of the artist's works. Here the sitter has a well defined face, his strong features well-modulated and handsome, its flesh tones set-off by a black jacket and tie, his white shirt front, and the red book he holds. No shadows merge his body to its neutral gray background, before which it floats in a shallow spatial plane. In contrast to this spatial treatment is the red drape to his right, which is heavily shadowed and highlighted, its contours defined and exaggerated.
Probably MA circa 1840. Sight size 22 x 27 1/2 inches and in a period gilded frame 28 3/4 x 34 1/4 inches. Please see condition report.

Columns flank him on each side, and his gaze, directed backward, counter-balances the leftward weight of the over-all composition.

Dated 1834 in pencil on the back and marked "Taken at Otis, Mass." An inscription noting descent lists "Miss English" and "Miss Frannie Chesbro"?"" Unidentified artist. Gilded frame. Excellent condition,

Please see DOCUMENTATION for complete condition report.

Image is 10 1/2 by 12 1/4 inches and frame is 14 by 16 inches.

Labelled in large painted script on the back , "The House that Jack Built", this oil on paperboard landscape/fancy piece, is also signed and dated in painted block letters
"W M Prior 1851"
on its original upper strainer bar.

The scene portrayed, although probably painted in Boston, appears to be on the Hudson River and shows a Greek revival house with six white columns suppporting a mansard-like roof and a tower on or behind it. Six large potted shrubs line the walkway to the house. In the distance sale boats float on the river and a road to one side leads to a couple walking towards an arched opening to the river and probably an unseen landing. The sun sets on this scene, and pink-hued white clouds rise over the water and far shore.

Rarity here is incredible. Although hundreds of Prior portaits exist and his landscapes are mentioned in his advertisements of the period, the actual works fall into the"heard of but never seen" category, until the recent exhibition of his work at the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, New York, "Artist and Visioary: William Mattew Prior Revealed" and its accompaning catalogue by by Jacquelyn Oak and Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw. Here an unsigned but attributed example from the museum's collection was illustrated on p. 28. A second example was also shown, was also from their collection.

19 1/2 x 23 inches unframed and 23 x 27 inches in period gilded frame. Condition report available.

First purshased by Edith Gregor Halpert for her trend setting New York City gallery which sold American folk art to the first generation of collectors in the field early in the 20th century. 
A wonderful painting of a brown-eyed young woman posed in a full frontal pose, the symettry of the composition only varied by the inclusion of a leaf decorated branch painted on the crest rail of her chair.Her lace is expertly done, and in one hand she hold a small book. The picture is described by Halpert on her gallery label which still is attached to the back of the picture, as being an oval, an unusual format for these artists. The missing area beyond the bounds of an oval appears here to have been found and replaced, along with the addition of a rectangular gold leafed frame. Possibly this addition something that was originaally part of the painting and which was removed to accomodate an easily added oval frame to complete the ensemble.Or it may be a later re-construction, obviously making the image have an appearance more true to the artists' works than with out this addition.

23x28 inches framed. circa 1825, New York State.