Notes
Property of a Descendant of the Artist
Beautifully and meticulously rendered in a bold and colorful design, this delightful watercolor illustrates not only the skill of its young artist, but also the increasing sophistication of female education in early nineteenth-century New England. The work is one of five closely related survivals depicting the Goddess Aurora in her chariot above a stylized land- and seascape. All display the same overall design and in addition to the main subject, feature a similar grassy foreground, a river mouth with a full-rigged ship with half-furled sails and a red and blue striped masthead flag sailing toward a town consisting of a cluster of white-painted buildings. Such uniformity indicates a common source, most likely a composition drafted by a teacher and faithfully copied by his or her students. Reflecting differences due to individual expression, skill level and degree of completion, the variations among the five are largely limited to the decoration of the chariot, the presence or lack of a legend along the bottom edge and the number of background structures. The picture now at the American Folk Art Museum (fig. 1) and the example offered here both include a town featuring a steepled church and Greek Rotunda as well as applied labels with identical legends praising the Aurora's powers. Two others, those now at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and one that sold in these Rooms in 1995 (fig. 2), display an almost identical town and a blank reserve along the bottom edge that may have originally contained the same legend. The fifth example, in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM), lacks the reserve and shows a smaller cluster of residential buildings.(1) Two of the five indicate the artist's identity with this example made by Ruth Downer (1797-1833) of Woodstock, Vermont and another by Eliza Ann Robeson (1798-1834) of Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire (fig. 2).
Both Robeson's picture and this example by Ruth Downer are accompanied by separate works by the same artists (fig. 3 and lot 304) and, displaying similar facial features and foliage, three other works of different subjects appear to have been made in the same school (fig. 4).(2) Together, these ten pictures illustrate the output of a New England school that flourished during the second decade of the nineteenth century. As indicated by the use of her maiden name, the pictures painted by Ruth Downer were executed before her marriage in 1819 and, given her birth in 1797, were probably not made much before 1810. The same applies to the pictures by Eliza Ann Robeson, who was born in 1798 and married in 1820, and her mourning picture commemorates her mother, who died in 1814.(3) Furthermore, the Naiad picture in fig. 4 can be dated to after 1810 as it features a printed label based upon a poem first published in May of that year. Affixed to the lower edge, the label reads In listening mood, she seem'd to stand,-- The Naiad of the fairy strand. These lines are undoubtedly a re-wording of the following two lines from Sir Walter Scott's poem, The Lady of the Lake: In listening mood, she seem'd to stand the guardian Naiad of the strand.(4) And, the only dated work from the group, the picture entitled Jephthah's Return by Betsy B. Lathrop, is dated 1812. There were many young women of this name living in New England at the time, but through the reference to her great-niece, Mary Cornwall, this individual can be identified as Betsy (1797-1860), the daughter of Simon (b. 1760) and Mary (Wetmore) Lathrop of Norwich in New London County, Connecticut.(5)
As the three known artists hailed from Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut, their school could have been located in any one of a number of New England locales, but evidence points to a Connecticut origin. Several of the compositional elements and certain details of rendition seen in the watercolors painted by Eunice Pinney (1770-1849) of Simsbury and Windsor, Connecticut, are also found on works from this school. In an undedicated memorial dated to circa 1815, Pinney meticulously depicts each individual leaf on a weeping willow in a manner similar to Eliza Robeson's rendition of the same subject (fig. 3). Both works also feature related floral garlands and, also included in Ruth Downer's Diana (lot 304), a stream lined with grassy tufts that runs diagonally across a lower corner and helps frame the main subject. Like the Aurora pictures, Pinney's memorial as well as her circa 1813 Children Playing contain white-painted buildings with red roofs, including a steepled church. Finally, the checkered grounds, painted in perspective with no surrounding walls, of this school's two Jephthah works are similar to those on Pinney's Masonic Memorial (1809) and Family Register of Butler Piney [sic].(6) Otherwise, Pinney's style differs considerably, with less refined figures in eighteenth-century garb, but taken as a whole, the noted similarities suggest one possible source of this school's influences. In turn, this school may have inspired an unidentified artist working in the 1830s. A watercolor memorial found in Massachusetts bears a related cherub that, like the Aurora pictures, has gilded wings as well as a three-masted full-rigged ship sailing away from the viewer.(7) Symbolizing the soul's journey to the afterlife, a departing ship is often featured in mourning pictures, but whether it had the same significance in the Aurora pictures is unknown.
Strengthening a Connecticut attribution, Betsy Lathrop, one of school's known artists, hailed from Norwich and, born in Vermont and New Hampshire, Ruth Downer and Eliza Robeson may well have traveled south down the Connecticut River to receive their schooling. Ruth's grandfather, Andrew Downer (1726-1819) was born in Norwich, and later removed to Coventry, Connecticut where her father, John Downer (1769-1863) was born, before moving to Sharon, Vermont in the 1770s.(8) Although she was born in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, Eliza Robeson and her family were closely allied to the Bellows family of the Vermont towns Walpole and Bellows Falls, both situated along the Connecticut River. After her mother's death in 1814, her father re-married Susan Bellows (1780-1860) whose first cousin, Louisa Bellows (1792-1868) had attended the Misses Pattens' school in Hartford.(9) Furthermore, though its artist and history are unknown, the AARFAM's Jephthah's Rash Vow was owned in the late nineteenth century by Lincoln C. Haynes (b. 1865) of Springfield, Massachusetts, the great-grandson of David Haynes (1756-1837), who apprenticed to a Norwich silversmith.(10)
Ruth, Eliza and Betsy may have studied at one of the well-established schools for girls or at one of the many smaller operations run by women to provide often much-needed income. The most prominent Connecticut schools operating during the second decade of the nineteenth century comprised those run by the Misses Pattens' and Mrs. Lydia Royse in Hartford, and Sarah Pierce in Litchfield.(11) As none of the known watercolors or silk embroideries with painted details from these schools resemble the work seen on the Aurora and related pictures, it is likely that the teacher of this school operated independently. With Betsy's close ties to Norwich, an intriguing possibility is Lydia Howard (Huntley) Sigourney (1791-1865), who along with her friend, Nancy Maria Hyde (1792-1816) ran a small school for girls in Norwich from 1811 to 1812. In her memoir, Letters of Life, Mrs. Sigourney recounts her early penchant for painting and one of her first teachers, an unidentified English woman: "my chief delight was to paint and draw in water colors-an accomplishment in which the instructress excelled." Before receiving a treasured water color set from her father, she made her own pigments and, from strands of her own hair, brushes. When her family moved into the Daniel Lathrop house in 1806, she and her mother decorated the walls with "small landscapes and bunches of flowers in water colors." After briefly teaching two cousins from the Lathrop family, she and Hyde sought to improve their teaching qualifications and studied embroidery and painting "at two of the best seminaries that Hartford then afforded." Though not named, these schools were most likely those of the Misses Pattens and Mrs. Lydia Royse. Upon their return to Norwich, they opened a small school in 1811 that increased in popularity during its second year and included the instruction of painting. Lydia Sigourney later became a famous poet and author of numerous literary works.(12)
It is also possible that the school, or at least some of its unknown students, were from the Boston region. The Aurora now at the American Folk Art Museum (fig. 1) bears its original frame that is labeled by the merchant and looking-glass manufacturer, Stillman Lothrop (1780-1853), who operated a shop in Boston at the address noted in the label from 1818 to 1822 and the Aurora pictures now in the AARFAM and RISD collections were found in Quincy and Salem respectively.(13) Furthermore, both the image of Aurora and the background structures in some of the related works appear to have been popular in the region during this era. The Goddess, in a horse-drawn chariot, is the subject of the lower iglomisi panels on several banjo clocks made by the Willard shops and other clockmakers in the vicinity, as well as a box and a tray attributed to early nineteenth-century Boston.(14) The distinctive building in the two works depicting Jephthah in the AARFAM collection is almost certainly copied from a print of the Gothic Temple at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, England and the Grotto at Stowe is replicated in an overmantel and engraving with Massachusetts histories. Interestingly, the Classical rotunda that appears in the background of the Aurora pictures is similar to those featured in late eighteenth-century prints of Stowe.(15)
Ruth Downer (1797-1833) was born in Sharon, Vermont, the daughter of John Downer (1770-1861), a successful landowner, hotelier and financier, and Hannah Brown Hunt. In 1819, she married David Pierce (1786-1872), a graduate of Dartmouth College and later a prominent lawyer and Judge.(16) As her pictures are known by the consignor to have been owned by Margaret Farrington Newell (1868-1962), Ruth's great-niece, it is likely that Ruth gave the pictures to her sister, Hannah Brown Downer (1798-1875), the wife of Lucius Hazen (1801-1862) and from her it passed to her daughter, Hannah Maria Hazen (1841-1922), the wife of Henry Clay Newell (1835-1922) and mother of Margaret. Upon her death in 1962, Margaret's estate passed to Edith (Ritter) Newell (ca. 1885-1975), the wife of her deceased brother, Downer Hazen Newell (1880-1939) and these pictures were inherited by the current owner, Phil Newell, Edith's grandson and great-great-great nephew of the artist.(17)
Footnotes:
(1) For the Aurora pictures in the RISD and AARFAM collections, see The Old Print Shop Portfolio 1, no. 8 (April 1942), pp. 1, 7 as cited in Betty Ring, catalogue entry, American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York, 2001), p. 505 (fn. 4) and Beatrix T. Rumford, ed., America Folk Paintings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Colonial Williamsburg, 1988), pp. 225-226.
(2) The two additional pictures, Jephthah's Return and Jephthah's Rash Vow, are in the AARFAM collection. See Rumford 1988, cats. 185, 207, pp. 239-241, 257.
(3) Mrs. Emily R. Barnes, Narratives Traditions and Personal Reminiscences Connected with the Early History of the Bellows Family (Boston, 1888), p. 212.
(4) Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake: A Poem (Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne, 1810). The two lines quoted are from canto I, stanza 17. J.G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Scott (Philadelphia, 1837), available on-line, in chapter six, at http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/STARN/prose/WSCOTT/LIFE/content s.htm.
(5) Rumford 1988, pp. 240, 242 (fn. 5). Mary Ann West (b. 1839) married Dr. Nathaniel Oliver Cornwall (b. 1816) in 1860. She was the great-granddaughter of Eunice (Lathrop) Brockway (b. 1753) and Eunice was the brother of Simon, Betsy's father. See Edward Everett Cornwall, William Cornwall and his descendants (New Haven, 1901), p. 101.
(6) For Pinney's Undedicated Memorial, Children Playing and Masonic Memorial, see Jean Lipman, Tom Armstrong, eds., American Folk Painters of Three Centuries (New York, 1980), pp. 144-147; the Masonic Memorial is also illustrated in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York, 2002), cat. 25, p. 45; for the Family Register of Butler Piney [sic], as well as another related memorial by Pinney, see the website of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, at http://www.mfa.org/artemis/results.asp?ca=Watercolors.
(7) Beatrix T. Rumford, "Memorial watercolors," antiques (October 1973), fig. 7, p. 693. A picture attributed to the same artist is illustrated as fig. 8 and the author refers to five additional related works.
(8) David R. Downer, The Downers of America (Newark, NJ, 1900), pp. 31-32, 89-90.
(9) Susan's father Joseph (1744-1817) and Louisa's father Josiah (1767-1846) were both sons of Colonel Benjamin Bellows (1712-1777), the founder of Walpole. See Northeast Auctions, Property from the Collection of Geoffrey Paul, August 4, 2002, lot 653.
(10) Rumford 1988, p. 257 (fn. 1). See entry for David Haynes, www.ancestry.com, ID no. I56119, which gives source, Frances Haynes, Walter Haynes of Sutton (Haverhill, MA, 1929), pp. 70, 92.Direct lineal descent from David to Lincoln C. Haynes is as follows: David's son Henry, to his son Calvin Bugbee (1833-1875), the father of Lincoln C.
(11) For more information on these schools, see Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, vol. I (New York, 1993), pp. 202-223.
(12) Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Letters of Life (New York, 1866), pp. 53-56, 189-196; see also Mary E. Perkins, Old Houses of the Antient [sic] Town of Norwich (Norwich, CT, 1895), p. 196.
(13) Ring, 2001, cat. 241, p. 505.
(14) Sotheby's New York, January 18-19, 2001, lot 766; Paul J. Foley, Willard's Patent Time Pieces (Norwell, MA, 2002), fig. 166, p. 73; Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. 3, P3254, p. 719 and vol. 6, P4457, p. 1455.
(15) Marcus Whiffen, "James Gibbs and Betsy Lathrop," Antiques (September 1954), p. 212; Nina Fletcher Little, "Engraved Sources for American Overmantel Panels," Antiques (October 1965), figs. 10-12, p. 499; Edith Gaines, ed., "Collectors Notes," Antiques (February 1967), pp. 240, 242).
(16) History of Coos County, New Hampshire (1888); Frederick B. Pierce, Pierce Genealogy (1882), no. 606.
(17) For Hazen-Newell family genealogy, see Tracy Elliot Hazen, The Hazen Family in America (Thomaston, CT, 1947), pp. 272-273.
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Fig. 1Aurora, The American Folk Art Museum. Sold in these Rooms, June 3, 1989.
Fig. 2Aurora, by Eliza Ann Robeson (1798-1834). Private Collection. Sold in these Rooms, January 26, 1995, lot 76.
Fig. 3 Mourning Picture, by Eliza Ann Robeson (1798-1834). Private Collection. Sold in these Rooms, January 26, 1995, lot 75.
Fig. 4Naiad. Offered in these Rooms, January 26, 1991, lot 177.
