拍品专文
Like the silk needlework pictures that adorned the walls of the Federal homes of young lady's practiced in the accomplishemnts of a formal education, painted furniture also attested to a lady's skill and served as a focal point of achievement. Usually embellishing sewing tables, dressing tables and boxes, painted decoration of this quality was less frequently applied to tilt-top stands.
Academies which taught young lady's the art of drawing, sewing and fine needlework in the eighteenth century expanded their curriculum in the early nineteenth century to include the art of ornamental painting on wood. The school of Miss Mary Ann Colman in Newburyport specialized in this technique as did schools in Bath, Maine, Northampton and Boston. Painted on birch or maple in imitation of decorated English and French neoclassical satinwood tables, designs were often first drawn in ink and then enhanced with watercolors. Inspired largely from print sources and drawing manuals with each teacher instilling her own style, decorative elements are often comprised of floral arrangements and trailing vines, landscape scenes, and seashells. See Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses (New Haven, 1992), no. 150; Fales, American Painted Furniture (New York, 1972), pp. 177-183; Montgomery, American Furniture (New York, 1966), figs. 477-482.
The decoration of this stand is very similar to the ornamental painting on a Boston worktable decorated by Sarach Eaton Balch of Dedham, Massachusetts (Fales, fig. 293). Balch was a student in Mrs. Susanna Rowson's academy, one of the more prominent lady's schools in New England known for the fine needlework pictures made by her pupils. Sarah Balch and the two ladies who painted this stand, Julia Pegram and Sussanah Todding, appear to have shared the same instructor. Mrs. Rowson taught young women in Boston from 1807-1822, a time frame that corresponds to the dates of 1815-1816 inscribed on the stand.
The surface of each table is decorated with a round or oval central landscape scene outlined with a distinctive thin light-colored band around which are painted large flowers intertwined with small heart-shaped leaves detailed with descernable toothed edges and ribs. Whether the Misses Pegram and Todding were from Boston or took classes from Mrs. Rowson and lived elsewhere is uncertain, but the design of the stand suggests a community north of this urban center.
A similar octagonal tilt-top stand is illustrated in Sack, American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection 2 (1965), no. 805, p. 322.
Academies which taught young lady's the art of drawing, sewing and fine needlework in the eighteenth century expanded their curriculum in the early nineteenth century to include the art of ornamental painting on wood. The school of Miss Mary Ann Colman in Newburyport specialized in this technique as did schools in Bath, Maine, Northampton and Boston. Painted on birch or maple in imitation of decorated English and French neoclassical satinwood tables, designs were often first drawn in ink and then enhanced with watercolors. Inspired largely from print sources and drawing manuals with each teacher instilling her own style, decorative elements are often comprised of floral arrangements and trailing vines, landscape scenes, and seashells. See Barquist, American Tables and Looking Glasses (New Haven, 1992), no. 150; Fales, American Painted Furniture (New York, 1972), pp. 177-183; Montgomery, American Furniture (New York, 1966), figs. 477-482.
The decoration of this stand is very similar to the ornamental painting on a Boston worktable decorated by Sarach Eaton Balch of Dedham, Massachusetts (Fales, fig. 293). Balch was a student in Mrs. Susanna Rowson's academy, one of the more prominent lady's schools in New England known for the fine needlework pictures made by her pupils. Sarah Balch and the two ladies who painted this stand, Julia Pegram and Sussanah Todding, appear to have shared the same instructor. Mrs. Rowson taught young women in Boston from 1807-1822, a time frame that corresponds to the dates of 1815-1816 inscribed on the stand.
The surface of each table is decorated with a round or oval central landscape scene outlined with a distinctive thin light-colored band around which are painted large flowers intertwined with small heart-shaped leaves detailed with descernable toothed edges and ribs. Whether the Misses Pegram and Todding were from Boston or took classes from Mrs. Rowson and lived elsewhere is uncertain, but the design of the stand suggests a community north of this urban center.
A similar octagonal tilt-top stand is illustrated in Sack, American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection 2 (1965), no. 805, p. 322.