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Lot Essay
With its finely articulated delineation of costume but flat overall stance, this unusual large family portrait incorporates features typically found in American folk portraiture. The work of artists such a Ralph Earl, Joshua Johnson, and Erastus Salisbury Field, among others, shows a precedent for large groupings of people on one canvas in late 18th and early 19th century American portraiture. The comparatively lower number of these multi-subject portraits, however, in contrast to the larger body of single portraits (even in pairs) suggests that by the 19th century, this mode of likeness was more rarely commissioned in America.
The particular presence of certain props, however, such as the stiff proscenium, the exotic bird, the sash on one child's dress and embroidery on the cap of another suggest neither an Anglo nor East Coast point of American origin for this portrait group.
At the time this portrait was most likely painted in the early years of the 19th century, America was expanding its western borders with Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase of 1805. Over and beyond the popularity of French design and culture in America as a result of France's aid to the Continental Army, the Louisiana Purchase injected a new strain of Continental European-French-Creole-Caribbean flavor to the otherwise Anglo hegemony.
It was to this context that artists such as Anthony Meucci and his Spanish wife, Nina, arrived in New Orleans from Rome in 1818. By 1821, the Meuccis had moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where they established a painting and drawing academy. After 1822 and until 1826, the couple worked throughout the eastern seaboard as far north as Portland, Maine, as well as Salem, Massachusetts, New York City, and Richmond, Virginia. By November 1826, Meucci's name appeared in the New Orleans Advertiser, and he is known to have worked as a portrait miniaturist as well as a scenery painter for the Orleans Theatre. The couple's name appears again in New Orleans, in the same newspaper in February 1827, after which they left for South America and there is no record of them working in the United States again.
Several of Anthony Meucci's portraits are in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts as well as the New-York Historical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While there is no evidence to connect Meucci to the painting illustrated here, his recent arrival from Europe to a more European-American city where he painted stage sets suggests a presently unknown painter of similar background and experience as the author of this family portrait.
For information on Anthony Meucci, see Groce and Wallace, The New-York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860 (New Haven, 1957), p. 440; Catalogue of American Portraits in the The New-York Historical Society (New Haven, 1974), p. 465, no. 1231; pp. 804-805, nos. 2054-2056; and Johnson, et al. American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection(New York, 1990), plate 20c and p. 154, fig. 133.
The particular presence of certain props, however, such as the stiff proscenium, the exotic bird, the sash on one child's dress and embroidery on the cap of another suggest neither an Anglo nor East Coast point of American origin for this portrait group.
At the time this portrait was most likely painted in the early years of the 19th century, America was expanding its western borders with Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase of 1805. Over and beyond the popularity of French design and culture in America as a result of France's aid to the Continental Army, the Louisiana Purchase injected a new strain of Continental European-French-Creole-Caribbean flavor to the otherwise Anglo hegemony.
It was to this context that artists such as Anthony Meucci and his Spanish wife, Nina, arrived in New Orleans from Rome in 1818. By 1821, the Meuccis had moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where they established a painting and drawing academy. After 1822 and until 1826, the couple worked throughout the eastern seaboard as far north as Portland, Maine, as well as Salem, Massachusetts, New York City, and Richmond, Virginia. By November 1826, Meucci's name appeared in the New Orleans Advertiser, and he is known to have worked as a portrait miniaturist as well as a scenery painter for the Orleans Theatre. The couple's name appears again in New Orleans, in the same newspaper in February 1827, after which they left for South America and there is no record of them working in the United States again.
Several of Anthony Meucci's portraits are in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts as well as the New-York Historical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While there is no evidence to connect Meucci to the painting illustrated here, his recent arrival from Europe to a more European-American city where he painted stage sets suggests a presently unknown painter of similar background and experience as the author of this family portrait.
For information on Anthony Meucci, see Groce and Wallace, The New-York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860 (New Haven, 1957), p. 440; Catalogue of American Portraits in the The New-York Historical Society (New Haven, 1974), p. 465, no. 1231; pp. 804-805, nos. 2054-2056; and Johnson, et al. American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection(New York, 1990), plate 20c and p. 154, fig. 133.